Feeling
by Cpt. Ritter
Summary: A chance meeting between two old comrades in arms sparks off a deadly chain of events. When old enemies from Siruzu Omalee's past return to haunt her, there's no length she won't go to silence them for good. Feeling is a jointly authored project with Matrix Aran.
1. State of Mind

For a planet that was undergoing what could best be described as "aggressive urban development", it was unsurprising that quite a few bars and cafes had popped up almost out of thin air to fill the void of enjoyable places to eat, drink, relax, and generally be lazy as flowery ideas popped into ones head.

The coveted prime spots for such locals were located along what residents had informally dubbed Main Street; rather than use the overly symbolic, convoluted and far too long name the Romulan-Federation-Klingon committee had settled on. By the time the council had voted to approve Rhihhaanasylamannel, Main Street had already stuck, and only a few of the businesses had taken the gamble of changing their establishment's name in hopes of capitalizing on the new name.

On Main Street you could find anything from the after hours, bring your own bottle, hole in the wall; to the incredibly fancy and prohibitively exclusive restaurants sporting dress codes and personal chefs for each table; and everything in between.

For Sarah and Ellie their favorite was Chez Ardlon, a lovely little sidewalk cafe just about halfway down the avenue, just opposite a small fountain plaza. the name had something of an old world charm to it that Sarah couldn't place, and that Ellie insisted she had seen in extranet postings that suggested it was mostly related to 18th or was it 19th century France, with a sprinkling of Spanish, Italian, and Bolian influences. Mostly.

Sarah had managed to rebel against Ellie's efforts at getting her to have a set routine, and finally after some prolonged and tortuous negotiations they had settled to limit the predictability of their visits to the cafe to a weekly event.

As they walked over to their usual table a familiar figure caught Sarah's eye. The figure was sat down so she couldn't judge the woman's height, though she had something of a athletic build. She had red hair, though not the same shockingly red shade as Sarah's, her's was more modest, pulled back into a ponytail. Then there were the trill spots running down her neck in a familiar pattern. Something finally clicked and her mind made the connection: It had to be Siruzu.

Sarah and Ellie hadn't seen Siruzu in almost a month. Siruzu had quite literally dropped off the face of New Romulus. They probably could've found her if they'd wanted to, but Siruzu had been in a foul mood and frankly... being around her was dangerous, if the rumors of a vigilante in the mountains had any truth to them.

Siruzu looked like she hadn't slept in weeks. Dark shadows ran under her eyes and she leaned heavily on her forearms. The combat armor Siruzu had lived in was conspicuously MIA. The trill had opted instead for a dark jacket and matching pants. Both were wrinkled slightly, as if only recently coming out from storage.

The woman she was speaking with was a spitting image of Ellie, black hair, green skin, the difference was the clothing. Whereas Ellie seemed to prefer impossibly white outfits, this green skinned woman wore a black jumpsuit with a... wait a minute... was that a Guenidier fleet patch on the green woman's shoulder?

Naturally, Ellie grabbed Sarah's arm and began dragging her over to Siruzu before Sarah could protest.

"...we drop out of warp and Sean yells, 'surprise bitches!'" The Ellie look-alike was saying.

Sarah saw Siruzu crack a grin. "You're joking Talia... when was this?"

"A few months back." Talia quickly replied. "Had the whole fleet there. Probably one of the better assaults we've ever done. Even grabbed one of their prisoners, or so I heard."

"You heard right." Sarah finally managed to add in. "I'll probably never forget that comm message."

"Wait..." Siruzu looked up very abruptly. "... that was... oh... that was then." She leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms across her chest. "I may have played pickup for Sarah."

Talia glanced at Sarah and then to Ellie. "What is this... twins day?"

"You know... we do look alot alike." Ellie met Talia's gaze. "You're not photonic though."

"You're a hologram?"

Ellie nodded with a cheerful smile. "Pho-ton-ic life-form. It has wonderful perks."

Talia seemed a bit skeptical. "If you say so. I have to say I've personally not met many holograms that were actually lifeforms. More used to holodeck fantasy programs."

"That's where I came from!"

Siruzu groaned loudly. "Sit down before you make a scene you two."

Sarah grabbed a pair of chairs from one of the nearby tables and set them down. "You've still not introduced us Siz."

Siruzu groaned again. "Sarah and Ellie, meet Talia. Talia, meet Sarah and Ellie." Clearly Siruzu was still in a foul mood and Sarah was beginning to wonder if interrupting her conversation had been the right course of action. Not that she could've stopped Ellie, but still.

Talia however was much more friendly. She extended a hand. "A pleasure. I was just sharing some stories from home for Siruzu, given that she's not been back lately."

"Busy shooting Tal Shiar slobs," was Siruzu's blunt response. "The highlands are.. well were... infested."

"Hold on," Sarah interjected, "I must ask, are you the same Talia that's has been a known accomplice of a known prankster by the name of Siruzu?"

Talia gave Sarah a cat like grin. "I may or may not have known a young prankster by the name of Siruzu Omalee."

Sarah grinned, "I only ask because we haven't been able to find this notorious prankster Siruzu. She's dropped off the map and left a body double to shoot Tal Shiar."

"Well perhaps she just saw fit to quit while she was ahead after sabotaging the Admiral's replicator." Talia mused.

"Oh trust me, she did worse before she went into retirement." Sarah said, with Ellie nodding in agreement.

Siruzu's head hit the table with a dull thunk.

Talia shook her head at the sight, "I'll take your word on that."

"What brings you out here to New Romulus anyhow?"

"Sean asked me to meet with a few Romulan contacts over here, figured I could check up on Siruzu while I was here."

It took Sarah a moment to make the connection from the informal mention of Sean to Admiral Sean Cunningham who'd pulled her out of the prison months back. "How is the Admiral doing? He knocked over any more super secret prison facilities."

Talia laughed. "Super secret yes, prisons no. We think we're narrowing in on something big. Last place we raided gave us information that all of the previous places we hit might be connected."

"Find the source, shove a quantum torpedo down it." Siruzu added.

Talia shrugged. "Pretty much." The conversation very awkwardly died shortly thereafter. Talia broke it. She stood, revealing a modified phaser on her hip. "I better get moving, I've gotta meet with a certain senator at a certain time and a certain place... and try to avoid getting frisked by security."

Siruzu stood, walking around the table to Talia. "Thanks for stopping by, it was good to see you again."

Talia placed a hand on Siruzu's shoulder. "Try to get some rest Siruzu. Stop by later, you've got the address."

Siruzu nodded, said a brief goodbye, then left Ellie and Sarah behind.

"Siz looks very sad." Ellie said after what seemed to be an eternity.

Sarah could only nod. She'd been at a loss for how to help Siruzu for a long time and it was killing her to watch Siruzu drift further and further away. Of course, she knew it was causing Ellie no shortage of distress either. What could they possibly do though?


	2. The First Insult

Getting a call from Siruzu later that night had caught Sarah by surprise. The message had been direct. Get to Talia's hotel and room ASAP. Sarah hadn't even given a second thought to bringing Ellie with her, though in hindsight, she might've tried to slip away from Ellie, had she known what she was going to see.

Talia's hotel was located on Avenue Four, one of the six hub avenues that ran from the center of New Romulus City to its outermost ring roads. Unlike Main Street, which ran from the Federation Embassies and the city limit wall, toward the outer ring road; Avenue Four was lined on either side with towering apartment blocks and the odd skyscraper.

With an eye on protecting the lush environment of New Romulus, strict building regulations had been enforced, drastically limiting any horizontal expansion of the city. With an expected population growth of just over six million romulans by the end of a standard year, there wasn't a single building within twelve kilometers of the center that wasn't at the very least five hundred meters tall.

Roads weren't just limited to the surface either, several of the buildings had long connecting skybridges the spanned across the large canyons formed by the avenues below, allowing pedestrians to walk from one building to another without having to descend to ground level. In theory, there were enough of these bridges that with some patience, one could find a route to walk from the center of New Romulus city, all the way out to one of the ring roads, without ever having your feet touch the planet's surface.

Talia was staying at 'The Estate', which it turned out was something of an exaggeration by the proprietor. Sarah would have rated the hotel a close three out of five which made it decent, but undeserving the extravagance that its article-noun name suggested. The building was only a sixty some odd floors tall, so even the penthouse suites still had to put up with the incessant din of aeroshuttle traffic at all hours. Sound proofing was probably an option, but at the speed the Romulans had been throwing up new buildings, such luxuries were out of the question given the demand for new buildings.

"Sarah, why can't we ever walk into anywhere the normal way?"

Sarah looked amused, "The normal way?" she asked as she held open the staff deliveries door for Ellie.

"Through the front door, like everyone else does."

"Can't I have just one odd habit?"

"This isn't your only odd habit." Ellie quickly added, "And I don't mean those ones. I mean like always being early to an appointment, never going anywhere at the same time. It's such a nightmare trying to keep track of your schedule."

"Well that's sort of the point." Sarah explained as she started to look for the service turbolifts.

"Why?" Ellie asked, dragging out the word in some exasperation. It was Ellie's favorite word and Sarah was finding it harder and harder to hide her discomfort every time Ellie asked.

"Because I'm just a little paranoid." Sarah answered honestly.

"I thought you said you'd stopped."

"I have." Sarah thumbed the console to call the lift. There was no voice control installed.

"But we're using a service lift." Ellie wasn't going to let it go.

"I stopped, it's over with, I swear, I'm just... something about Siruzu was off when she called- Hold on, what floor did she say?"

"Fifty second. What was off?"

Sarah tapped the controls and the lift hummed to life.

"She hates being left in the dark. But she was holding back over the comm-line."

"Maybe she's a hypocrite?"

"Ellie, that's not nice."

"But it makes sense."

The two women stepped out of the lift and into the middle of a rather narrow corridor. The walls were immaculate, the paint still new, though the color was what Sarah would describe as an ugly shade of puke green which she found hard to believe even the Romulans could find attractive. Each hotel room had its door recessed into the corridor, giving each doorway a minor sense of privacy.

The corridor was only just barely lit by some recessed track lighting, and at either end by a single floor to ceiling window, one of them offering a small glimpse of New Romulus' twin suns setting.

The dewa twin stars were not in fact identical twins, Dewa-A was a yellow star and the smaller of the two, while Dewa-B was a large blue star that by some miracle of celestial mechanics was in an orbit that locked it mercifully far away from New Romulus. Dewa-A was already behind the mountains on the horizon, only a fraction of its relatively large yellow disk still poking up above the terrain. It's sister star, Dewa-B's relatively small disk was still hanging over the horizon and while Dewa-A slipped out of sight, it would linger for a few hours more, casting a faint blue shine across the sky until the horizon finally caught up with it

The door to Talia's room had been forced open, the servo motors ruined, though still whining futilely as they tried to close the half destroyed panels. Siruzu was already inside. Clothing was scattered all over the floor. Several PADDs were smashed on the floor. The bed had been snapped in two from what looked like a bone shattering impact.

Siruzu was holding onto one of the smashed PADDs, muttering to herself. She looked up as Ellie and Sarah entered.

"Talia sure is messy." Ellie had a talent for stating the obvious... though in this case she was wrong. Sarah knew a crime scene when she saw one. The lack of Romulan authorities was interesting given their presence on the Romulan capital.

"Ellie... while some of this may be Talia's... I'm pretty sure something else might've happened."

"Would say robbery." Siruzu stated. "Except they didn't take anything of much value. Even left Talia's rather impressive underwear collection behind. Hallway security cams were shut off, nobody is in the nearby rooms, and they smashed her commbadge and removed her subdutaneous transponder." Siruzu held up a pair of smashed devices. One of which was covered in dark green blood.

"Struggle?" Sarah asked.

"Oh... she gave them hell." Siruzu said with what Sarah was sure was pride. "At least one of them went down on that bed hard."

"Did you call the police?" Ellie asked quietly.

"No point." Siruzu replied. "Romulan police forces are a joke. Hence why there's a sizable Starfleet and Klingon military presence here."

"So what are you going to do then?" Again Ellie had the obvious question.

"Simple, I'm going to figure out who was here, find out what they did to Talia, then I'm going to kill them." Sarah had to admit, Siruzu's logic was wonderfully simple and straightforward.

Ellie had fallen silent, doubtlessly trying to puzzle together why Siruzu would need to kill someone. Sarah was glad Ellie still wasn't jaded yet by life like Siruzu and herself were.

"I assume you've thought this through a bit more than that." Sarah asked.

Siruzu shrugged as she stood. "Not really thinking that far ahead." She pocketed a few pieces from the smashed PADDs. She headed for the door, slipping between Sarah and Ellie.

The next few seconds took place in slow motion. Siruzu reached the door threshold and was immediately struck by the back end of a weapon of some sort. The trill recoiled and slammed into one of the side walls. The sound of both events caused Sarah and Ellie to turn, just in time to see the first of a number of commandos enter the doorway.

Now, commando was a term Sarah would loosely ascribe to them. In many ways they resembled the Guenidier fleet assault troops she'd only run into a few months back. They wore black combat armor, no shoulder patches, and as soon as she saw the second 'commando' enter, knew they had identical weapons. So... not Siz's friends. That was only if she didn't consider the rather forceful blow Siz had taken to the head.

Ellie screamed and dived out of the way. Sarah's reaction was a bit more effective. She pivoted on one foot, let the commando slide out of her way, then grabbed for his weapon as he passed. The commando had obviously paid far more attention to Ellie as he made almost no effort to keep control of his weapon, or he simply just didn't have time to react.

Sarah flipped the weapon on its back end and slammed it's stock into the Commando's helmeted skull. The protective layer may have taken some of the impact, but not enough to prevent him from hitting the ground. She followed up with another twirl of the rifle and a shot from the phaser. The weapon had apparently not been set to stun, judging by the burning hole in the commando's head.

Now, any competent commandos would've either tackled her to the ground or gunned her down by now, so the question was, why was she still on her feet? There was a crash as Siruzu tackled the second commando, which incidentally cleared Sarah's line of fire. While Siruzu wrestled with the second commando, Sarah opened fire on another two just now getting through the doorway.

A snap indicated that Siruzu had just finished with her commando and was now equally armed. It was a rather gruesome scene, with the commando's head twisted violently to one side. The two that had been in the doorway were now in the hall, both with multiple smoking craters in their chests.

Siruzu headed for the doorway, jumping back at a torrent of phaser fire that flashed across the hallway.

"More?" Sarah asked.

"More." Siruzu replied. She opened fire on the door across the hallway, blasting it open in relatively short order, then dived across, narrowly avoiding the incoming phaser fire from both directions.

"How many?" Sarah yelled over the phaser fire.

"Ten... maybe twenty." Siruzu's reply was yelled as well, in between taking shots down the hallway. Both women were well pinned though.

"This really isn't going well."

"Yah think?"

"Ellie... we might need your help."

Ellie wasted no time coming to Sarah. "So much... violence... it's not..."

Sarah grabbed a phaser rifle off the floor and pressed it into Ellie's hands. "Sorry Ellie, but we need you to help."

"But I..." A look of horror crossed Ellie's face. "...I don't know how to use this."

"Look it up." Siruzu yelled, just as her eyes went wide. "GET DOWN!"

Sarah dived, taking Ellie with her just as an explosion detonated above them. The walls shattered, exposing drywall, power couplings, extranet hookups and more. Ellie screamed again. Somehow, Siruzu was still on her feet, in the hallway, using the explosion as cover and firing at one end.

She only stayed there a second before ducking back into cover, just in time for another fireball to rip through the hallway. It wasn't directed at them though... which meant... oh no... it couldn't be.

Ellie's eye were wide. "The building's being demolished, with us inside it!"

"Siz, we gotta go!" Sarah yelled, rolling off of Ellie as the entire building shook from explosion after explosion.

"Yeah... I got it." Siruzu took a deep breath. "Follow me."

The look it Siruzu's eyes told Sarah she'd better move. By the time Sarah managed to get on her feet and start pulling Ellie up, Siruzu was already in the hallway, firing again. The returning fire was ineffective and there was no shortage of swearing coming from the remaining commandos.

Ellie screamed as Sarah dragged her into the hallway, her phaser rifle firing blindly down the opposite end Siruzu was headed for. She stumbled, but kept going.

Upon reaching the end of the hallway, Siruzu kicked open the door to the stairs, only to find them consumed in flames already. "Can't get out that way."

"Turbolift shaft?" Sarah asked.

"Didn't they ever tell you not to get into turbolifts in a fire?" Siruzu quipped in response while stepping over corpses near the window at the end of the hallway.

"Thought that was a problem of the 20th century?" Sarah replied flatly, having taken a break from shooting given a fireball had consumed the remaining commandos. The fire was headed towards them. "Not to be a bother Siz... but the fire is headed our way."

Siruzu opened fire on the window, spraying phaser bolts against transparent aluminum. Thankfully, her phaser shots broke through in relatively short order. Siruzu looked out. "Fire escape has activated, we can climb down."

"Ladies first." Sarah replied, gesturing to Siruzu.

Siruzu grabbed her and shoved her towards the window. "Go Sarah, I'm not losing another friend today."

Sarah knew better than to argue. "Come on Ellie."

The fire escape built into the side of the hotel was rudimentary at best. It probably would've never been used. Modern fire prevention systems were usually capable of stopping fires within seconds using a combination of force fields and fire suppression systems. So the expectation of having to manually climb down the outside of the building was borderline ludicrous, but regulations were regulations.

Ludicrous or not, they were doing it. It was a set of small handholds, running down the side of the building down the fifty some stories to street level, with small landings every now and then. Sarah could see the crowds starting to gather at street level, along with more commandos heading towards aeroshuttles on the road.

"Siz! The commandos!" She yelled, gesturing down as she climbed, with Ellie only a few handholds above her and Siz just a few above that.

"Move it then, we can't let them get away."

Mercifully, the building had stopped exploding at that point, though the damage had clearly been done. Flames were belching from at least half of the windows. Romulan fire and police forces had arrived, but were having trouble containing the crowds.

"Sarah!" Siz yelled. "Think that person is important?"

Sarah hazarded a glance over her shoulder. In the midst of a number of the commandos, getting into an aeroshuttle was a blond woman. She was dressed in the same armor, minus the helmet, but surrounded by them. "Oh yeah."

Sarah dropped the last few handholds to street level. The commandos' aeroshuttles were spooling up their engines, just about to take off and presumably head out of town. "Ever hotwired an aeroshuttle?" Sarah asked, eyeing the nearest vehicle.

"Would you believe I haven't?" Siruzu asked.

"Isn't that illegal?" Ellie chimed in last.

"Yes." Siruzu replied and headed straight for the only aeroshuttle near them, one thankfully parked in a fire zone.

It was a simple Type 5 aeroshuttle, the kind that one would kindly describe in a publicity brochure as 'the reliable workhorse of Federation ground installations', while every pilot that touched the controls of one had their own 'special' name for it. Thankfully for Siruzu, the reliability was due to its simplicity, and that simplicity extended to its anti theft measures.

Sarah crouched down beside Siruzu and leaned around the body of the shuttle, hazarding another glance back at the commando leader, the blond woman. She was definitely the one in charge of the operation, at least on the ground level. There would probably be more elsewhere, watching or perhaps just listening in on the action.

Sarah didn't have enough time to really notice much else about the woman before she started to board her own aeroshuttle, a black sporty shuttle that had been converted for special operations use. Most of the modification had involved stripping out its opulent interior and the multitude of luxury creature comforts to save weight that could better be used for hauling around more phaser power cells and heavy mortars, without impacting on the vehicle's thrust to weight ratio. Sarah recalled once overhearing a group of MACO technicians refer to the model as the Black Swan, though she never could understand why.

The blond was halfway onto the shuttle when she suddenly stopped, and turned back to look at Sarah and company. A moment later Sarah could see her tap her combadge and though Sarah was a good hundred meters away from the woman, she could just imagine hearing the Blond's order: 'Reactionary units, engage new hostiles, bearing one three five, next to the pathetically underpowered shuttle.'

"Uh, girls, we're about to have-"

Sarah didn't even have time to finish her sentence before four well armed commandos literally fell out of the sky behind them.

Sarah shoved Ellie back towards the shuttle and charged right into the middle of their formation, before they could regain their bearings, ducking under the rifle of the first one in front of her until he was behind her. She grabbed for the rifle belonging to the commando on her right, dragging it by the emitter to point towards the commando on her left. She jerked the rifle towards her while letting her phaser pistol smash into his helmet, then sidestepped as he tripped over his feet and tumbled into Lefty. Now only the rearmost commando was facing her, and he couldn't very well shoot at her lest the phaser bolt passed through his target and hit one of his comrades. That would just be hell to have to explain to his boss.

Sarah tossed her phaser pistol at his faceplate and the soldier flinched out of reflex, pulling the barrel of his rifle up to deflect the low speed projectile. Sarah caught the rifle by the bottom of its emitter and pushed with his momentum. The soldier's shoulder became a fulcrum, and before he could realise it the rifle was behind his back. Sarah shoved the rifle's emitter in between his right arm and side, using leverage to pull his arm up behind his back as her free hand reached for his left arm. She pulled it up past its natural range of motion and let it fall back so it was wedged against the rifle, unable to move back far enough to get free.

Siruzu grabbed Ellie who was standing mouth agape at the scene and dragged her back around to the other side of the shuttle where they were out of any lines of fire.

"Siruzu," Ellie started in a bemused tone, "What's Sarah doing?"

Siruzu didn't even bother looking up from her work. "Having fun I'm sure."

"Why did she run towards them?"

"Better she run at them, then the other way around. It's really hard to hack an aeroshuttle while fighting for you life."

By now the other three soldiers had recovered from the confusion to spot their companion tied up with his own rifle, but they still hadn't had a chance to move out and find new firing positions. Sarah kicked the bound soldier back into the mess and moved in on Lefty. Again the long barreled phaser rifle proved to be more of a hinderance to the soldier than any aid. Sarah quickly relieved him of it, twirling it about until it connected with the side of his kneecap, before spinning it upwards into the side of his head as he stumbled to one side. She reached around the commando's neck with her free hand, rested the rifle on his shoulder and dragged the limping commando back towards the shuttle, putting the craft between her and what was left of the commandos.

She shoved the unconscious commando into the back seat of the aeroshuttle, firing her rifle over the roof of the shuttle at the remaining commandos who had just managed to get back on their feet.

"Sarah, they're shooting at us!" Ellie shouted from inside the shuttle.

"Yeah, they tend to do that."

As the shuttle lifted off the ground, she fired off another few volleys at the troopers, hanging onto the shuttle's door frame with one hand. Sarah looked around and just managed to spot the Black Swan merging into traffic.

Siruzu joined in with her own captured rifle as Ellie commanded the shuttle off the ground.

"Sarah, I don't think this is such a good idea."

Siruzu chimed in, "She's important, we're talking to her, end of story. Floor it Ellie."

"So what has Starfleet's finest mafia gotten itself into this time Siz?" Sarah asked as she slid back inside the cabin.

"How the hell should I know?"

"Well its either that or these are some of your Tal Shiar friends."

Siruzu manhandled the unconscious soldier's head upright, "Does he look like a Tal Shiar?"

"Maybe they've started using a new hiring agency?"

"Why are you slowing down?" Siruzu asked.

"The light's red." Ellie explained, pointing to the shuttle's traffic HUD.

"Screw the light!"

"But that's illegal."

"Just do it!"

The Type 5 jolted forward through the intersection, it slid through each turn, narrowly grazing more than one building as they tried to keep up with the Black Swan

"Can you hold this thing steady Ellie?" Sarah asked as she tried to take aim on the Swan

"I didn't come with stunt pilot training."

"Can't you take direct control of this thing, Ellie?" Siruzu asked

"Can't you steal a shuttle with an autopilot interface?" Ellie shot back as she tried to stay focused on the controls.

Inside the cabin, the unconscious commando's combadge echoed, "Overwatch one, the target has left the zone, please advise."

"Who's Overwatch?" Ellie asked.

"Not good." Siruzu answered.

A female voice answered the radio transmission: "Stand by, retasking local authorities." The voice changed her accent and spoke again, "NRS Dispatch to all available units, Tal Shiar operatives sighted fleeing in a blue EB-02 Type 5 aeroshuttle through district five. All available units, clear to code three."

"What's code three?" Sarah asked.

Ellie, having taken a moment to look up the answer recited: "Engage in high speed pursuit and detain suspects."

"Oh. More bad then."

The Type 5 arced through a series of turns as they tried to keep up with their target, the sport shuttle handling hairpin turns with far greater ease. It turned into the unfinished shell of a skyscraper, construction workers diving for cover as it snaked past structural supports, nearly knocking apart sections of scaffolding.

Siruzu shouted up out the open window, "Sarah, we've got-" She was cut off by the loud whoosh of a rocket whipping past the aeroshuttle. Another two rockets shot by in close succession.

"Any guess what those are?"

"Ellie, evasive maneuvers!"

"Evasive what? I'm trying to catch-" Clunk. The shuttle was rocked to one side as something heavy and metallic slammed into the rear of the shuttle.

"I'm losing power here!"

The shuttle's engines started to whine plaintively as the police sirens grew louder behind them. Ahead of them the black shuttle was trying to gain distance on them, swerving out into low altitude traffic. Ellie hardly made the turn to avoid an oncoming car as she tried to settle their shuttle back into the chase.

"Can't you get that thing off us?" Ellie asked

"How do you expect me to do that while we're flying?" Siz asked.

"Hit it with a hydrospanner, something, anything." Sarah said as she started taking potshots at the sports shuttle, anything she could do to slow the damned thing down.

The commbadge squaked again, another female voice this time, "Overwatch One, I'm being engaged by the target. Send support."

"Roger. Retasking air asset." Overwatch replied.

"Overwatch one, Command Actual, please stand by for asset control transfer." A male voice this time.

"What's an asset?" Ellie asked.

"Bad, Ellie. Bad." Siruzu said.

The sports shuttle lurched upwards suddenly, climbing into an airway full of oncoming traffic.

"She's... crazy." Ellie's eyes were wide as saucers, though to her credit, she pulled the Type 5 in right behind the Black Swan. The shuttle cockpit instantly lit up like a christmas tree as large traffic alert rectangles flashed across the HUD windscreen, an automated computer voice insistently repeating 'Traffic Alert! Dive!', over and over.

"Truck Ellie." Sarah said rather calmly as a large, thirty metric ton truck blared its air horn, the driver frantically trying to pull up as it rushed towards their shuttle, the enemy sports shuttle easily swerving past it. "Truck." Sarah repeated.

"I heard you!"

The shuttle's engines whined in protest, the police leach attached to their shuttle denying them power. With their shuttle trying to keep full speed, and the mass of the truck, the collision looked unavoidable.

Just then, there was a shout of almost manic sounding laughter from somewhere behind Sarah, and every console inside the shuttle suddenly lit up like a betazoid nightclub. The shuttle engines whined to life and the tiny Type 5 shot straight up, just missing the oncoming truck cab by centimeters.

Ellie maneuvered the shuttle past another three cars and into a tight left turn as she gained again on the sporty craft.

"Sarah!" It was Siruzu this time.

"What is-" She'd started to turn toward Siruzu, but she already had her answer as she saw the comparatively massive hull of a Peregrine fighter glide in behind them.

Siruzu broke the silence. "Uh Ellie, we need to go faster."

"Asset two zero, cleared hot with 20 golf whiskey. Destroy the target." The combadge squacked.

Ellie didn't ask this time and quickly swerved the shuttlecraft around a corner as two pods under the Peregrine's wings glowed bright orange.

Sarah watched in disbelief as the fighter followed them through the turn, it's twin phaser gatling cannons raking nearby buildings as the fighter's gunnery officer fired with total indifference to their potential collateral damage. Shards of transparent aluminium rained down the sides of buildings and the blistering heat from the phaser bolts shattered them before they could even begin to melt.

"Uh Ellie, not to be a front window driver, but could you hide us somewhere?" Sarah asked.

"There's nowhere to hide, there aren't trees at two hundred meters up."

Siruzu's voice came from the other side of the shuttle, "Ellie, that mall, go!"

"But I'm not allowed to fly inside." Ellie protested.

"You're not allowed to fly dead either."

The photonic lifeform quickly tapped the controls and the shuttle shot down and to the right, flying over a pedestrian skyway as she dipped the shuttle inside of the New Romulus Mall & Life Fulfillment Center. The shoppers surely weren't expecting the sight as the two trill clung onto the sides of the shuttle, firing phasers into their wake as the peregrine charged after them. Ellie commanded the shuttle down lower, scraping its nacelles against the promenade, shrieking in terror every time she had to dodge another group of pedestrians.

"Sorry! Sorry!" she kept repeating as she weaved her way down the street, trying to search for something that would help. Her extranet searches for "losing a tailing Peregrine fighter" kept turning up few hits. "Sarah! What do I do?"

"Fly -into- the mall." Sarah's voice had an almost deadpan calm to it.

"Oh dear..."

The shuttle raced through an archway that the designer had more than likely never imagined would have to cope with a shuttle, scraping the side of one of its nacelles as it arched into the even more cramped mall interior. The inside was only three levels, with balcony promenades above the first level lined with artisan pottery shops, and Bajoran Bed and Bath chain stores, the walkways only just wide enough to fit the shuttle on top of. They were hovering around the second level and as far as Sarah could see the only entrances were similar arches on each compass point into the mall. Nothing that the Peregrine could ever manage to sneak through. Sarah was fairly confident they had bought some time. The enemy would have to send in infantry, and that would give them-

Sarah's thoughts were cut off by the explosion of concrete and steel off to her right as a tidal wave of tiny shards of concrete and steel erupted from what used to be the Mall's east wall. Before the dust could clear she could see the Peregrine rushing in to greet them.

Ellie threw the shuttle into a hard left, the engines whining in protest as she gunned them, the wash kicking up even more dust as she dived down to the ground floor, pulled into a tight roll, banking them to almost vertical as she flew along a wall. The Peregrine didn't follow them though, it settled into a hover in the center of the mall, looking down at the tiny shuttle.

Sarah's eyes went wide as she realised what the Peregrine was about to do.

Before she could say anything the shuttle wobbled a bit as Ellie overcorrected on the controls and slammed into the wall. The effect was instantaneous, the shuttle slowed dramatically just as the section of wall in front of them turned into a shower of sparks, metal and concrete as a hail of phaser bolts demolished shopfronts in front of them.

"That was an impressive evasive Ellie."

Ellie brought the shuttle back to speed, "It wasn't-Acck!"

Sarah looked back down into the cockpit just to realise that the unconscious soldier they had lumped into the back seat was now far from unconscious, his arms wrapped around Ellie from the back seat, wrestling to clamber into the front and get at the controls for the still moving shuttle.

Sarah dived back inside the shuttle, trying to strike at the soldier from the front seat, finding the same problems the commando was finding from the rear. In the cramped confines of the shuttle there was little room to strike or block. The soldier drew a knife, tried to slash at Ellie. Sarah could see the shock register across his face as the knife slashed right through her as if it was thin air, right before Sarah locked his arm in place, her left coming across to break his nose in short order.

"Sarah I can't fly like this." Ellie was kicking at the windscreen, trying to get some leverage against the commando's arms.

"I'm working on it!" Sarah shouted back as she ducked a kick from the soldier as he struggled, still trying to twist his trapped arm free.

"We're gonna crash!"

Before Sarah could hook her arm across the soldier's jaw, the soldiers head disappeared quickly, soon replaced by the sight of Siruzu's combat boots as she slammed him into the other side of the cabin.

Ellie took back control of the shuttle, whipping it under a staircase and back up toward the third level. "I'm really, really, getting tired of you!" With another couple of taps the aeroshuttle powersided, sideswiping into the side of the peregrine fighter, knocking it out of its balanced hover. The heavy fighter was never designed for precision flight, and the automated hover subroutines could hardly compensate for the sudden shock of the collision. As the computers quickly tried to recalculate their vectors, the Peregrine corkscrewed forwards and plowed into a Vulcan D'vin store. (It was actually a nice underwear store, surprisingly)

"Can we get out of here before the police find us again?" Ellie asked.

"Please." Siruzu said as she took a seat in back, shoving the crumpled heap of a commando out of her way.

The shuttle drifted out of the mall and back into traffic. They all knew the distraction in the mall had cost them the chase.

"It was worth a try." Siruzu slumped down in her seat, looking quite defeated.

"Hey, uh, Siruzu?"

"Yes Ellie?"

"Doesn't that shuttle look exactly like the one we were chasing?" Ellie pointed out the front windscreen.

Siruzu's jaw dropped, "It -is- the shuttle we were chasing."

"What are you waiting for?"

"What do you mean?"

Sarah and Siruzu both shouted in unison:

"Go after it!"

Ellie gunned the shuttle's engine and sent the craft rocketing across traffic to pull up alongside the Black Swan, before she slipped her craft sideways and slammed it into the sport's shuttle's port nacelle. Sarah had to admit the woman was learning fast.

The effect was immediate. The sports shuttle was built for speed, precision and power, needless to say it was not built to have two tons of shuttle slam into its nacelles and the mounting cracked in to with ease. However, their own shuttle didn't come off unscathed. As the black shuttle's nacelle failed, it arced out in front of the shuttle and before Ellie could back off, the craft slammed into the sports shuttle nose first. Then Sarah blacked out.


	3. War

Waking up upside down was never enjoyable. Much less so when you recognize the blond standing over you, and even worse when she's wearing combat armor and a grimace. Sarah's reflexes took over while her mind tried to wake up.

A kick, a roll and she was back up on her feet. She deflected the blond's first strike, dodged the second. Her mind still couldn't make sense of the situation, she couldn't take it all in. The blond tried to kick, and Sarah sidestepped. The kick was a feint to cover for her drawing a large hand phaser.

Sarah lunged out, in one motion she batted the phaser off to one side, holding firm as she shoved it toward the blond's gut so she couldn't bring it to bear again.

The blond lashed out with her left, Sarah tried to deflect the blow but it landed with still most of its strength on the side of her jaw. Sarah headbutted the blond, wrenched the phaser from her grip, but before she could turn it around the blond sent it clattering to one side.

Sarah was finally getting her bearings. She recognized the rooftop hotel, the site of the crash. She could see the remains of the sports shuttle on the far side of a large swimming pool. The pool itself was surrounded on three sides by the building, while the crash site had an unobstructed view of the half finished towers of New Romulus. There was a poolside bar next to the ruined shuttle, its stools and tables had been abandoned in a hurry, along with half finished drinks and meals.

The blond's fist came hurtling toward Sarah, distracting her focus again as she was forced to deflect it, twisting her body to one side to avoid the inside blow.

Where was Ellie? Where was Siruzu? Sarah's mind misfired again, and this time she couldn't catch the blow in time. The blond's fist slammed into her shoulder with full and devastating force. Sarah felt her legs slip out from underneath her, only now realising just how off-balance she was. Her reflex to the first blow had lead her right into the the blond's trap.

_Get off the ground!_ Sarah's mind shouted at her, like an impatient tutor to a slow student, but everything was wrong. The blond stomped on her injured shoulder. Sarah's arm shot up in another reflex and the blond snatched it in an instant. Using it for leverage, the blond hammered her foot down again. Sarah felt the white hot pain and heard the sickening crack as her shoulder dislocated.

The boot to Sarah's head was just the coup de grace, and the world went dark yet again.

XXX

Of course, Sarah didn't know this, but Siruzu and Ellie had landed just a few meters away. Siruzu slowly opened her eyes, to stare at a pair of dark irises staring over her. Ellie was shouting something.

Siruzu could feel something warm on her forehead. Blood probably, but she didn't have time to worry about that. Had to get... get to her feet. Had to... what was Ellie so insistent about...

It was about that time that Siruzu caught on to the fact that there was an orange rain... no... those were phaser bolts impacting around her. It took all her drive to pull herself to her feet, grab the phaser rifle from the ground, run to cover, and get ready to return fire.

Ellie was still freaking out. Siruzu finally took a moment to listen. "SHE GOT SARAH! WHAT AM I GOING TO DO?"

"Ellie..." Siruzu tried to get the hologram's attention.

Ellie continued to flip out.

Siruzu slapped her. "ELLIE!"

Ellie's holomatrix flickered for a moment, but she stopped screaming. "Owiee... that wasn't very nice."

Siruzu sighed. "Sorry... in case you haven't noticed..." She spied movement out of the corner of her eye and turned to fire on a pair of commandos advancing towards her. "...we're not in a nice situation and I need you to chill."

"I... but... she got Sarah."

"Slow down." Siruzu wiped her forehead. Yep, blood, didn't feel too bad though. "Who? Where?"

Ellie pointed beyond the commandos, towards the far edge of the building, where the blond woman they'd been chasing was dragging a rather unconscious looking Sarah towards an open spot. Siruzu could see something in the distance, possibly a shuttle.

"Okay... here's what we're gonna do."

Ellie nodded.

"You don't even know what I'm gonna say!"

Ellie shook her head. "Doesn't matter."

Siruzu looked around at her feet and grabbed a discarded rifle that had conveniently spilled out of their crashed shuttle. She handed it to Ellie. "You're gonna have to fight, cause I'm not exactly 100% here."

Ellie looked like Siruzu had just massacred her favorite teddy bear. "But I don't know how..."

"It's easy... point, shoot. It's not like the bad guys are all that accurate..." A phaser bolt cracked by her head, missing her by a few millimeters. "I stand corrected." She returned fire.

"But I... I can't..." Ellie held the phaser rifle like it was a bomb.

Siruzu sighed. "Fine... just... stay out of trouble..."

Then Siruzu was off, running on adrenaline. The good news: the adrenaline had done wonders for the shell shock of being in the crashing aeroshuttle. The bad news: she was facing at least ten remaining commandos, all with good firing positions on her.

They all had the high ground advantage, some were even on balconies. That complicated things. Siruzu ran forward towards the first commando, hiding behind an overturned table. She shot him on the way before sliding around the table and out of the line of fire from at least three more of them.

This exposed her to the remaining six. At least these six were on the same level. She pushed off the ground and ran towards the side of the building, firing more or less blindly as she went. Orange phaser bolts responded in kind, slamming into the side of the building all around her. Somehow... she made it through, and even managed to get two of them.

A pillar provided some cover, even as bits and pieces of it began to break away under phaser fire. She returned fire again, this time aiming high at one of the commandos on a balcony. Her shots rang true, slamming into the armored man and pitching him clean over the railing. He landed with a satisfying thump, which distracted two more of the commandos enough for her to take them out as well.

Of course... in the time that it took to do all that, the situation had changed again. The remaining four commandos were running straight at her, blocking all of her escape routes. The other two snipers were above her, so they didn't have a clear line of fire. She glanced around in a second or so she had, spying an EPS relay above her and fired.

In hindsight, this had been a terrible idea. The conduit didn't simply rupture. Instead it turned an odd red color, then proceeded to back fire along the other portions of the conduits, ripping clean into the structure of the building and sending a shower of transparent aluminum in all directions.

She ducked, covering her head. When all of the explosions had ended, she found herself staring down the barrel of a phaser rifle. Even Siruzu knew she was probably outmatched. Her rifle was completely out of position and the commando's finger was on the trigger.

She didn't dare move, even as she ran through the math in her head. She had any number of options, they just all ended the same way, with her getting a phaser bolt to the head.

"Drop the weapon!" The commando holding the weapon yelled.

That was when a torrent of phaser bolts slammed into him. Siruzu threw herself to the ground as phaser bolts sprayed everywhere. All around her she smelled burning flesh. A good ten seconds later it stopped.

Siruzu slowly poked her head up, noting that she was clearly still alive and had no more holes in her than those she'd started with. She looked up, standing about 3 meters off was Ellie, holding a smoking phaser rifle.

Siruzu said nothing as she crawled back to her feet.

"Took a bit to find a good extranet link on how to use a phaser rifle..."

Siruzu snorted and nearly fell over with laughter despite herself. She waved for Ellie to follow her and started back towards the blond. She got a handful of long strides before she realized that Ellie wasn't moving. She turned, just in time to see Ellie drop the phaser rifle and her entire holomatrix flicker for a few seconds. "Ellie..."

Ellie sat down slowly, her program stabilizing. She shook. "I just... I just..."

Siruzu glanced back at the blond, who was getting closer to what was probably a landing pad. "Yes and right now you need to move."

Ellie looked up, twitching involuntarily. "I... I just killed someone." Her program flickered again.

Another shuttle raced overhead. Not a Swan this time, probably a Type 16, known affectionately by it's crews as the Tug because it was big, roomy and easily carried a full strike team. It didn't have warp capability though. There was a back entry ramp and large cargo area, with a forward mounted cockpit. They also had side mounted phaser cannons, for clearing drop zones. This probably didn't bode well.

Siruzu grabbed Ellie's shoulder and shook her. "I wish I didn't have to force you into this and I wish we had time to talk, but I need your help Ellie."

The hologram blinked, then slowly nodded.

"I need to deal with that shuttle, somehow. I can't rescue Sarah while I do that." Siruzu took a deep breath. "You can still get to her though."

Siruzu didn't think it was possible for Ellie to look any greener, but she sure looked physically ill. Ellie slowly uncurled her legs and stood up. She picked up the discarded weapon. "I can't lose Sarah."

Siruzu gently pushed Ellie forward. "Good enough motivation for me. No one says you have to kill either..."

Ellie spirits seemed to lift the slightest bit at that comment. Good, hopefully Siruzu had made the right call getting Ellie up.

Now as they dropped from the pool area into the dining area the situation became a bit clearer. The blond woman and her guards were near the landing pad and the shuttle was swinging around. Siruzu jogged forward, not sure exactly how she was still standing.

"Ellie, I'll distract them, get Sarah!" Siruzu opened fire as she ran, spraying orange phaser bolts indiscriminately. Which to be honest, given Sarah's position on the ground, was probably a bad plan. She aimed up instead, going for the shuttle.

The shuttle veered up off it's landing approach and headed straight for her, along with most of the commandos. She shoved Ellie out of the way, towards the nearby building, away from what was sure to be a suicidal last stand. For anyone but Siruzu though.

She'd seen the technical schematics for that shuttle design though. Despite the paint job, the shuttle she was more or less staring down was not heavily modified. That meant that while it wasn't exactly vulnerable to small arms fire, it was totally defenseless to things that got under it's shields.

She ducked behind a support beam for the nearby building, occasionally ducking out to shoot at something. It was all just a distraction as this point though. The shuttle was hovering low, not firing, but was very very low to the ground. She could see the shields flickering against the floor.

Her cover was starting to break apart under the fire, which meant it was time to move. She hoped Ellie was doing what she was supposed to. Siruzu rolled out and ran forward, her phaser on full auto and spraying.

The shuttle opened fire. Massive globs of energy crashed down where she'd been only seconds before, snapping the support beam completely free. Debris scattered down from above. By the time it reached her, she'd slipped through the shuttle's shields. She aimed up and slid on her back, firing upwards. For the most part, her shots dinged harmlessly against the armor.

She only needed one though. There was a tiny cargo release valve that ran along the bottom of the shuttle. The design usually meant that Tug pilots flew higher on approach, so their shields covered the vulnerable spot. These guys so far had shown a tendency to fly low. She was okay with that as it was the only reason she wasn't dead.

She got lucky and hit it. The cargo bay area depressurized and the locks on the back hatch released. She stood, jumped and grabbed hold of the hatch. Her rifle clattered to the ground as she hauled herself up onto the hatch. The shields of the transport covered her from further attacks by the other commandos.

The shuttle started to spin and Siruzu knew she was definitely on borrowed time. She climbed up further on the hatch towards the manual release and yanked it. The hatch released instantly and swung down. Okay... that didn't go well. It was supposed to swing out, not down. She held on for dear life as the hatch nearly snapped off under her weight.

One of her hands slipped, just as the shuttle went for altitude. Not good. She had to get inside that bay and fast, or she was going to be falling without an aerochute. She regained her foot, digging her heels into the hand and foot rails and climbed up and around the hatch, and up into the bay.

She just barely managed to grab one of the hand rails inside the bay. Her vision swam dangerously and she gasped for air. She rolled towards the front, crawling to her feet, and grabbing one of the aerochutes as she went.

The door to the cockpit was ajar and she could hear voices.

"How could you let her get physically onto the outside of your craft?" A woman's voice echoed.

"Who tries to jump on a moving shuttle?" Was the response, by a very unremarkable man's voice, distorted by a helmet.

Siruzu didn't wait too much longer as she pushed the door open and entered the cockpit. It was about this time that she realized her rifle wasn't with her. Luck was with her though, hand phasers were one each pilot's seats. Neither pilot had managed to even turn by the time she closed the distance between her and them.

She grabbed both hand phasers and held down the fire button. Beams of orange light slammed into flesh and metal simultaneously. Smoke filled her nostrils and a computerized voice droned in the background.

"Critical system failure. Unauthorized weapons discharged detected. Immediately evacuation required."

Siruzu turned and ran back out the cargo bay of the shuttle. She pulled the chute only a second after diving out, realizing that the shuttle hadn't gotten that much altitude in reality. A photonic airfoil deployed, catching the updraft from the buildings and slowing her down immediately. She angled downward, picking up speed again and spiraled towards where she'd just been, where four more commandos stood there motionless.

At the last second she arrested all her downward momentum and angled straight into one of them. The impact knocked the wind clean out of her and sent them both flying into a table. Her head smashed into something solid. Everything went black.

XXX

Ellie didn't even know what she was going to do if she caught up to the blond woman, there had to be something though. Sarah needed her. As Ellie approached from the shade of the building, she could see the woman was yelling into a comm unit while pacing around Sarah's motionless body.

For a split second, Ellie worried she was too late. However, she could recognize a warm body. Sarah was still warm and that meant she was alive. Ellie raised her weapon and shouted out. "Don't move."

The blond whirled on her feet, turning to face Ellie. She didn't draw the hand phaser on her hip though. "Oh this is rich."

"I'm not rich." Ellie replied quickly. "And I said don't move!"

"Or what?"

"Or... I'll think of something!" Ellie shouted.

"You're a hologram, you're not even real. What the hell are you going to do?"

"Pho-ton-ic life-form!" Ellie proudly replied. "But how did you know that?"

"We're not stupid. We knew all about Omalee's allies on New Romulus. Of course, we didn't expect that you'd actually make it out of your apartment."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"It means you have sex, alot."

"So?"

"Your friend goes off the deep end of despair and you two have been screwing each other senseless for months on end. You provided us with the perfect opportunity. We'd kill Omalee and get the Orion."

"Why would you want to do such a thing?"

"They're a menace. They need to be removed from society."

Ellie frowned. "That's... really... just..."

"What? Cat got your tongue?" The blond drew her weapon as Ellie hesitated trying to come up with a response. "We'll have to just delete your memories, I'm sure we could sell you to some slimy ferengi for plenty of latinum."

"I'm not a thing."

"Who's been filling your head with these lies? You're some perverted man's fetish. You couldn't pull that trigger no matter how hard you try, you program won't allow it. You're not capable of killing, you're a sex toy!"

Ellie blinked, once, twice. Then something deep within her program triggered. She wasn't really capable of anger persay, but something just clicked. It'd be hard to explain to a non-hologram and even the most sophisticated program would probably spend an eternity trying to process it.

Ellie pulled the trigger. Orange bolts of phaser energy ripped across the space at a fraction of the speed of light. All of them struck home, slamming into the blond woman and pitching her over the safety railing, where she promptly fell one hundred and twenty stories, easily achieving terminal velocity before she hit the ground below.

Ellie looked down at the smoking rifle. She took one step forward, then another, and knelt beside Sarah. She gently nudged the trill. "Come on... wake up..."

Sarah groaned and opened her eyes, looking at Ellie. "What's..."

Ellie shushed the trill. "Don't worry, I'll protect you." Ellie looked up to see the shuttle explode and Siruzu come flying out of it. She watched as Siruzu slammed into one of the few remaining commandos.

The remaining commandos suddenly turned and ran though, getting beamed up and vanishing. All that was left was the remains of a destroyed courtyard, two injured Trills and one photonic lifeform. The twilight sun was warm on Ellie's face, warmer than ever before. She slowly helped Sarah to her feet as Romulan and Federation police began to arrive. This was going to make for fun explaining.


	4. The Second Insult

Ellie hadn't moved. It had freaked the hospital staff and caused quite the ruckus, at least until it had become more common knowledge that she was a photonic lifeform. Both Sarah and Siruzu had gone into surgery when they arrived and emerged a short time later. Both hadn't regained consciousness.

She'd been going over what had happened, trying to figure out what had changed in her. Something had. Something had changed itself, at the core of her programming, which had enabled her to shoot the still nameless blond woman. Something was significant about that, the commandos she'd shot earlier had been to save Siruzu, but Sarah hadn't been in danger... well immediate danger anyway.

She didn't like it. She didn't like violence and killing and pain. Yet she was strangely happy that the blond woman was dead. She wouldn't... blow up buildings and chase people with a peregrine fighter though the metropolis that was New Romulus, but was killing ever right? Even Sarah didn't claim she was a saint. Siruzu would be the first to admit she wasn't exactly nice. Why had Ellie been so willing to kill for them?

Well, willing was probably the wrong word. She was able. She'd not even killed a bug on New Romulus. She'd never held a phaser before... ever. She needed someone to talk to. Of course, both Sarah and Siruzu were still unconscious, and the nursing staff were totally not helpful. They kept asking if she wanted any food. It's not like she ate...

Siruzu stirred, groaning as she clawed her way back to consciousness, drawing Ellie out of her thoughts.

Ellie stood and walked over to where Siruzu lay, standing between the two women's beds. "Hey Siruzu."

"Ow." Siruzu said as she pushed herself into more a sitting position. "What the hell hit me?"

"Umm... I believe it was more who you hit."

"Oh... right." Siruzu rubbed her forehead. "I did run into them... what happened afterwards?"

"They ran away."

"Seriously."

Ellie nodded.

"Disappointing." Siruzu frowned. "Though I guess I might've been dead if they hadn't..."

"Not sure I would've been able to..." Ellie swallowed, or at least imitated it. "...kill... again."

"Don't suppose you got much out of that blond bimbo we were following?" Ellie was silently thankful for Siruzu changing the subject.

"She mentioned that she was after Talia, and that she planned to kill you."

"I'm a pain to kill. You'd think my enemies would've learned that by now."

"Then she said..." Ellie started to feel uneasy again, unsure if just repeating the words would make something bad happen. "She said... I wasn't real. That I was a sex toy."

Siruzu smiled. "Oh bad move. I do hope she got what she had coming to her."

"I guess." Ellie knew she didn't seem happy about it. Truth be told, everything was a bit of a mess. She didn't know how to put it in words though.

"Trust me Ellie, you're not just a sex toy. Maybe you started your existence like that. I was born a mewling screaming infant. As far as starts go, you've got a bit of a leg up."

Ellie smiled. "Thanks."

"Don't let it go to your head." Siruzu quickly added. "How's Sarah?"

"Doctor said she's gonna be fine. Of course, I've been waiting for you both to wake up. It only took six or seven nurses offering me food for them to realize I was a photonic lifeform. It's like you never see one..."

"You don't Ellie." Siruzu's statement was blunt. "There's like twenty in the entirety of the Federation. If that. Most people, when they think of a hologram, they think Vulcan love slave number nine."

"That's a hologram though, I'm a photonic lifeform. There's a difference."

"I know that, Sarah knows that. A lot of others though, don't. I think you provided you're a lifeform though."

"Killing makes you a lifeform?"

"No. You were never programmed to, but you did, because of what you felt. That's life. We make choices, I've made more than my share of bad ones."

"I don't like killing."

"Good."

"But you kill all the time."

"Yes I do."

"But... but..."

"I'm not a good person Ellie." Siruzu starred past Ellie to the opposite wall. "I'll kill anyone who I feel deserves it and I won't mourn their passing one bit. You shoot at me, you threaten my friends, and I'll destroy you. That's my choice."

Ellie looked down. "I don't understand. I don't see why you have to kill... "

"They took someone who I care about a great deal Ellie." Siruzu met Ellie's gaze again. "I don't care their reasoning. They hurt one hair on Talia and I will personally kill them all."

Ellie stepped back. "All of them?"

"They made their choice. I've made mine. I'll live with the consequences."

"You would do that, for her?" Ellie was trying to change the subject, if it worked it'd be a great weight off her shoulders.

Siruzu closed her eyes. "Yes, in a heartbeat."

XXX

The nurses had come in having noticed Siruzu was awake and had politely but firmly shooed Ellie out of the room. She may have protested if it had been any other day, but just the thought of confrontation still worried her.

Siruzu had made it clearer, she had helped, but everything was still so confusing. She kept replaying the confrontation, over and over again in perfect detail. She needed to know what happened. Was it love? That could definitely explain why she had... she didn't even want to use the word any more. It explained the blond woman, but not the commandos who were about to kill Siruzu. Well it wasn't as if she didn't care about Siruzu but... Ellie cursed silently, understanding this was so confusing, and then another worry started to creep into her thoughts. Wait, worry? Could she really worry? Was it fear?

She shook her head, not that it helped clear her thoughts but she had seen Sarah do it enough, it might work for a photonic lifeform as well. If it was love, she started to wonder on a different track, how far would she go?

Her thoughts would have probably spiraled into a crash if it wasn't for one of the nurses who had gently tapped her on the shoulder.

"Excuse me Miss?" The nurse asked delicately.

"Yes?"

"Your friends are both awake. You can see them now."

XXX

"That was a nice nap," Sarah said groggily.

Siruzu had the armrest to her bed halfway disassembled, picking at a few extra pieces with a hairpin. "Yep, you sure did nap for awhile."

"You're doing -that- again."

Siruzu didn't look up. "That?"

"Is there any time you don't do that?"

"Do what?"

"Randomly disassemble anything in sight."

"What else am I gonna do?"

"You do realise that armrest doesn't belong to you."

"You think I care? It's not like I won't put it back when I'm done."

"I do wonder sometimes what you find fun about it."

"At least I'm not sitting around being bored to tears like you."

"I just woke up."

"Excuses."

"Would you rather I asked Ell- Nevermind" She wasn't going to take the bait, not that there really was any. "What did I miss?"

Siruzu glanced over at Ellie as the hologram entered the room.

Ellie looked green, well, greener than usual. "Well, we talked for a bit. Then the nurses kicked me out. One of them threatened to deactivate me!"

"I was tempted to explain why they can't," Siruzu added, "given that she's on her own emitter."

"How long have we been out?"

Siruzu again looked over at Ellie.

"Umm... well there was the police bit... then the ambulance ride... surgery... and sleeping... so maybe twelve hours?"

"Come on Ellie.. you've gotta have a better clock than that."

Ellie blinked a few times and didn't answer.

Sarah decided to move the conversation along, "So, nothing like a nice afternoon drive, huh Siz?"

"You know, that's hardly the word I would use to describe what we just did."

"At least it was interesting."

"I'll give you that."

"Stop it!" Ellie screamed. "Both of you! Stop making it seem like it was nothing!"

Siruzu and Sarah traded slightly puzzled looks.

Siruzu shrugged and went back to tinkering with the biobed armrest.

Sarah turned to Ellie, determined to try and say something to calm the hologram. "Ellie... it's not..." Suddenly, there was a knock at the door.

Ellie murmured something to the effect of 'come in' and a short romulan man pushed his way through the door, pulling a meal cart.

"Would you ladies care for some tea?" He didn't wait for them to answer and with quick and quiet efficiency he began to set out cups and saucers for the three of them on a table between the two beds.

"I guess tea would be fine" Sarah said.

As soon as cups and saucers were all in their right places he tapped a button on the table and waited as the pneumatics brought it up to bed height. He then went off to a corner of the room and brought a stool over from one corner, one that was probably used by nurses who had to perform beDside procedures and brought it back to the table. He adjusted the height and then turned to Ellie, offering her the seat.

Ellie started to shake her head, about to explain how it really wasn't necessary, but the man insisted.

"Even photonic lifeforms should rest their legs for awhile," he said with a smile. "Come, sit."

Ellie made herself comfortable as Sarah and Siruzu looked on with bemusement as the romulan started to pour tea from an hospital issue pot. To Sarah's eyes, the fellow had a quiet, almost mouse like air to himself, small and unassuming, yet cheerful.

As soon as he had served all three women he went over to the far side of the room and found an armchair which he moved about so that all three of them could see him easily.

"You're not room service." Siruzu said as he was making himself comfortable, "So what do you want?"

"Would you mind if I introduced myself first?" he asked in a rather meek voice.

"If you have to." The trill had stopped fiddling with her armrest and gave the Romulan her full attention.

"My name is Tipler and I'm an investigator with the New Romulus Police. I realise you've both been through alot-"

"Then maybe you can leave us alone for a few hours?" Sarah had seen Siruzu's interruption coming a kilometer away.

"I'd very much like to do that, though I'm afraid I haven't the time to wait." Tipler seemed to suddenly realise he hadn't poured himself any tea. He got up from his seat and busied himself with the teapot.

"You don't seem to be in that great a hurry." Siruzu had a point.

"I'm still trying to wrap my head around all of this," he admitted.

"Ellie," he addressed the hologram as he set down the teapot, "in your statement to the first responders you said that strange men in black combat armor bombed The Estate hotel, shot at you and your friends, and that you chased their leader across the city in a aeroshuttle, refused to stop for NRP, and then were attacked by a peregrine class fighter, chased into a shopping mall and ended up crashing into the shuttle you were chasing after and crash landed on the penthouse pool of the Lyarian Building? Have I got that all correct?"

Ellie nodded an affirmative.

Tipler held his cup frozen in midair, as if he was still trying to process everything he had just said.

"Normally there would be a great deal of investigation into all of the dead bodies on that rooftop. An investigation into why several building were damaged by high yield phaser blasts, not to mention those explosions. We always must be vigilant of the Tal Shiar."

"Its not our fault they shot at us." Siruzu was again quickly to reply.

"True." The romulan returned to his chair and took a quick sip of tea. "It is your fault though that you disabled the Leech that would have otherwise bought your chase to a halt. You could have told us your story."

"And they would have been long gone."

"That I can't deny, though your efforts were not much better at solving the mystery. For some strange reason, there are very few people left to question about what their purpose was on that rooftop."

"Oops." Siruzu didn't even try to hide her smile.

"What about the woman's shuttle? Or the transport Siruzu crashed?" Ellie asked.

"Federation made equipment," Tipler replied, "outfitted with computers that have all conveniently had memory failures. Very little data to recover."

"And conveniently there are no identity records of any of the corpses ever existing." Sarah said half guessing the next problem.

"Correct." Tipler agreed. "In fact, because apparently no one existed, who could have therefore died, some of my superiors have decided that perhaps there were no crimes committed today, and that this investigation should simply be closed. So here I am, just trying to find some peace of mind."

"If this were my matter to handle alone, I would have the three of you behind forcefields until we could figure out right from left. However we're releasing you, effective of an hour ago. There is not even an officer watching your door, we simply do not care. One might assume you have powerful friends but then I looked through your files." He held up a pad for the three of them to see.

"Siruzu Omalee, enough citations to demote a commander down to latrine cleaner. Sarah Quiller stopped existing over ten months ago, and Ellie has no file except her application for Federation citizenship, which by the looks of things here is still tied up, something about a form not filled out in triplicate. Not exactly the dossiers of people with powerful friends."

Siruzu rolled her eyes. "Oh aren't you knowledgeable. You do an extranet search to dig that up?"

"Your embassy provided us with the files."

Siruzu snorted loudly. "You should really do that extranet search."

"If you insist."

The door opened again and another of the hospital staff slipped in. Though as far as nurses went, Siruzu had to admit, this one had some muscles on him, though Sarah paid him no notice. He was headed straight for Siruzu, holding a single hypo.

There was a bit of a stunned silence from the group of four. Tipler seemed a bit put off at not even had the opportunity to get the door.

"Not bad, for Romulan nursing staff." Siruzu commented. "They send you to the gym often?"

There wasn't a response. The man raised the hypo for her neck.

Siruzu slid off the bed, momentarily catching a chill from the hospital gown as she did. "Yeah, no more hypos."

"I insist." The man replied gruffly. There was something off in the way the universal translator kicked in. Siruzu couldn't place it off hand though. Maybe it was just a weird Romulan dialect.

"You should really listen to her." Sarah yelled from across the room.

The man abruptly vaulted over the biobed, lunging for Siruzu. The trill ducked in return, dropping to the floor and letting him pass above her and slam into the wall. Siruzu jumped to her feet and promptly kicked him square in the back while he tried to get up with the ball of her foot.

She shook her head. "So wish I still had those heels..." She grabbed him by both sides of his head and was about to snap his neck violently when Tipler spoke.

"Ms. Omalee, please don't kill him."

"Do I need to explain my philosophy to you too?" Siruzu hadn't twisted, but had the 'nurse' pinned solidly to the ground. "You attack me, I kill you."

"Perhaps he might have information you want." Tipler had stood, but made no move to get closer to Siruzu. "I would also like to question him myself."

"He does have a point Siz." Sarah added, having clearly not moved since the whole altercation had started.

Siruzu frowned, obviously debating the situation in her head. "Fine... give me something to tie him up with..."

Tipler produced a pair of handcuffs from his belt. "If you'll allow me..."

Siruzu released the 'nurse's' head, then as the nurse tried to get back up, grabbed one of his arms and snapped his back violently. The was a muffled gasp, then all resistance stopped. "Don't move dear. We want a word with you."

"Siz, did you really have to? Think of his medical bills for all the surgery."

"He's lucky to not be in a body bag."

Sarah rolled her eyes at that.

Siruzu stood. "And can I please have some clothes now."


	5. Drop

The nebula had a strange purple tint to it which served as a canvas for the thousands of twinkling lights that played across it, the result of an intense ion storm that raged within, sparked of countless millennia ago by some fleck of dust that had carelessly wandered into the nebula's perfect purple harmony, carrying with it a seditious and subversive charge that quickly destabilized the nebula's perfect harmony.

No doubt destroyed in that initial discharge, flashed to pure energy in some green or red hot burst of light. It had set off a chain reaction, a full spectrum war that battled out in ferocious discharges of light, unresolved to this day, long after anything could remember the light from that first fleck of dust. A war that would rage on for countless millennia to come until finally gravity would step in and have its way with the entire nebula, claiming it as a new star with perhaps a few planets and a moon.

The ship itself had been nothing more than a faint gap in the otherwise uniform randomness of discharges, an amorphous black shadow when viewed through the ship's long range telescope, computer enhancement only revealing a vague silhouette. Only passive scanning could be used. Any active measures to improve the quality of their data were ruled out in the interests of stealth.

Vague as it was, they could make out a number of important facts from the digitally corrected shadow. The silhouette only vaguely resembled a ship, and there was much squinting at the large view screen until finally someone could identify the pattern as "somewhat starfleet-ish". The computer could roughly estimate the vessel's length at over 1.2 kilometers, far longer than even the behemoth Odyssey class, the largest cruiser class ever built by the Federation, now mass produced at a horrifying rate.

The ships dimensions matched no known design that the computer could identify, the vessel's forward saucer section slightly resembled that of an Intrepid class, a sleek delta shaped primary hull that was blended into the main engineering hull like a curved arrowhead, though this saucer could easily fit an entire Intrepid inside its hull with room to spare.

The saucer gave way to the engineering hull, it too was longer than the entire ship it shared a resemblance with, tapering off at the end to sport two stubby warp nacelle pylons, attached to which were two 600 meter long nacelles which trailed far out past the end of the ship's hull.

As the Echoes neared her target, they had been able to get progressively clearer images of the mystery ship, though always in silhouette, the purple cloud of the nebula though bright to the eye offered little in the way of actual illumination, save for the occasional ionic discharge. It became quite clear that although a one-off design, the ship loitering in the nebula had been heavily modified since it originally left drydock. There were signs of large devices rather crudely married to the ship's hull that looked to serve as lightning rods, and other structures had grown out of the ships otherwise streamlined shape, none of them seemed part of the original design.

XXX

Believe it or not, there was a method to her madness. most people would consider her goal to be impossible, but it was immaterial for Siruzu.

The goal she was striving for was the ship. Something that at one point was a Starfleet ship, in the heart of an ion storm, in an area of space regularly showered with meteorites. Adding to the complexity was a hyper advanced sensor net augmented with point defense turrets and a high velocity ballistics shield. Not to mention the small army of fanatically loyal soldiers and unknown interior defenses.

Meanwhile, Siruzu had at her disposal a genius level intellect, a holographic lifeform that hadn't fired a weapon before this week, a reformed assassin (even if Sarah wouldn't admit it), a number of liberated phaser weapons, and the Echoes (a stripped down timeship turned luxury yacht). So yeah, the odds were against them.

Still there was a very scientifically rigorous way to go about it. It involved peeling each layer back in sequence, and if that failed, charging in guns blazing. Siruzu had been considering the former, Sarah was very much in favor of the latter, with copious improvisation. Ellie had stated she'd preferred not to attack at all. Violet had declined to comment.

So they opted for the direct approach; which had them strapped into torpedo casings with no room to move at all. Sarah had claimed that she'd done this before. Something Siruzu hadn't entirely believed. That being said, Sarah hadn't had much reason to lie about it.

The Echoes was taking a ballistic course at the target, firing, then vanishing just as quickly. Sarah had managed to con her friend Violet into flying, and had reassured Siruzu that she'd already tested the technique at least once, though in that case it had been a water landing. Siruzu didn't ask what Sarah had meant by that.

A display lite up on Siruzu's EV suit. [i]_10 Seconds.[/i]_

She counted, and was sure she only got to 6 before the torpedo shot forward. About a half second later it hit the hull plate and latched on. That was her cue. She triggered the emergency release with her thumb.

It blew open the 'back' of the torpedo and freed her head. This gave her just enough room to slide out. Another EV suited figure (Sarah) was crawling out only a few meters away. The third torpedo remained intact.

There hadn't been room for their weapons, so Ellie had shut herself off to ride the final casing, leaving room for said weapons. Siruzu didn't waste time heading for the torpedo.

Above them, lighting from the ion storm ripped across the sky, completely silent in the vacuum of space. It impacted towers along the hull, though the odd strike did seem to hit uncomfortably close to the hull itself. It was probably best not to think about it, considering if she wasn't looking up, she wouldn't have any warning it was about to impact.

A lever on the side released the torpedo and the contents began to slowly drift upward. She grabbed one of the rifles, then a second one, tossing it in zero gravity towards Sarah. At the same time, she flicked Ellie's holoemitter on. The hologram sprang to life on the spot, looking oddly conspicuous in her white outfit completely without a EV suit.

Ellie made all the motions of speaking.

Sarah tapped her helmet.

"OH RIGHT!" Ellie's voice boomed into their suit comms.

"Ow..." Siruzu groaned. "Did you have to be so loud?"

Ellie looked down at her feet. "Sorry... not used to speaking directly to suit comms."

"So where to Siz?" Sarah gestured to the hull extending in every direction. Another silent crackle of lightning arced across the hull, slamming into a tower in the distance.

Siruzu glanced down at the built in tricorder on the phaser rifle. Hatches were placed at regular intervals along the hull, spaced equidistant between each lightning tower. Occasionally plumes of plasma would billow out from vents in the hull.

"Any direction will do for now. Need to see what their security looks like."

Siruzu took lead, taking slow strides forward with the simulated gravity of her magnetized boots. Each step was silent and so far, there wasn't any evidence that they'd been detected. No obvious alarms had been raised and the tricorder wasn't reading any additional power signatures. So far so good.

They stopped at one of the hatches. There was an external computer interface, though hitting the buttons with an EV suit would be challenging. She didn't need to use the buttons though, a direct link with the tricorder and suit keypad would do.

"They've got quite the security setup." She said softly.

"You did hack Lyle's replicator didn't you?"

"More than his replicator." Siruzu grinned through her helmet. "There, I'm in. Releasing the... hey!"

"That doesn't sound good." Ellie was crouched down next to Siruzu.

"I may or may not have just tripped the alarm... but I got the hatch open." Siruzu gestured to the hatch just as it hissed open.

"You know, just once I'd like something to go according to plan." Sarah said whimsically as she took a step forward and looked down the hatch. "Umm... Siz... there's a second hatch."

"Well that sucks." Siruzu turned back to her wrist computer, just as orange bolts of light came flashing down the length of the hull.

Sarah returned fire at the distant targets. "Among other things."

Siruzu was forced to dive out of the way as a phaser blast nearly took her head off. "I can't work like this!" She popped off another few rounds from her phaser rifle.

"We kinda need to get in there."

"You don't think I know that?"

"Just saying."

"I told you we should have brought the cover shields."

"Can I help?" Ellie was crouched down in between them, clutching a phaser rifle but not making any effort to fire.

"Know how to hack a computer?" Siruzu dived out of the way again, sliding on the deck plating before her magnetic boots caught again.

"No."

"Think you can learn?"

"Maybe."

Siruzu waved Ellie over near the control panel. "Okay... it's alot like sex."

Ellie gave Siruzu a sideways glance, thoroughly perplexed. "But it's computer hacking."

"Look, a computer is just like a person. It stays focused on what it wants to do, computers are usually..." She ducked to return fire again, grateful that so far the commandos on the hull were keeping their distance. "... they're better at focusing. So the trick, is to distract it. Who doesn't like sex and get instantly distracted by it?"

"Are you seriously discussing sex right now?" Sarah yelled over the comm, in between firing bursts of phaser energy back at the various commandos.

"I'm playing to her strengths here!" Siruzu returned fire again.

"So I have to have sex with the computer?" Ellie asked.

Siruzu shrugged. "More or less."

"You two seriously have an obsession-" Sarah cut herself short to spray back a volley of fire at the commandos.

"It'll make more sense once you're inside." Siruzu held out her hand to Ellie.

"Oh that's just wrong." Sarah said. A concussion blast from her rifle knocked three commandos up off the deck, they flailed helplessly as they drifted away.

Ellie was clearly still confused. "You want me to do what?"

"Deactivate yourself, I'm gonna attach you to the computer."

Ellie flickered and disappeared, leaving the small mobile emitter floating in mid air. Siruzu grabbed it and latched it to the computer display, before getting back to firing again, using both her and Ellie's rifles.

"Well this is fun." Sarah was in between bursts of phaser energy. "My girlfriend is screwing a strange computer... and she didn't even ask me."

"We are kinda on the clock here."

The hatch behind them closed.

"Well... that didn't go as planned." Siruzu forced the commandos to duck again and she sprayed phaser fire across their uncovered positions.

"Do you always get it right your first time?"

"Yeah, I'm pretty good."

"Sure you are."

The hatch opened back up.

"That's better." Siruzu put a bolt of energy through one of the commando's helmets.

It closed again.

"Seriously... what is Ellie doing in there?" Sarah didn't have time to look, narrowly managing to avoid being shot. The commandos didn't have much cover, but neither did they. Sarah dropped her rifle and produced two heavy phaser pistols. Each pistol had its own target as she tried to keep the soldiers from flanking around.

"Apparently you're easy to please." Siruzu took down another commando.

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"As in..." Siruzu sidestepped and fired her phaser rifle again. "...you don't take much effort."

The second hatch opened.

Siruzu looked back. "Seriously... there's a third hatch down there."

"Well apparently you're not that experienced with this sort of thing."

"A recent dry spell doesn't..." Siruzu tripped, rolled, and once again narrowly avoided getting shot. "...doesn't mean a lack of experience."

"I wouldn't say its 'recent'." Sarah quickly crossed her arms and fired twice, another pair of soldiers fell.

The third hatch opened.

"Airlock."

"Don't forget Ellie!"

Siruzu grabbed the mobile emitter and dived into the airlock. Ellie started to materialize on the way down, which pushed her sideways into the deck, before catching the ship's artificial gravity and crashing to the floor.

Sarah was next, firing up as she went. "They're coming this way."

Siruzu rolled to the nearest console and closed the hatches above them.

"Everyone ok?" Sarah asked as Siruzu started cycling the airlock.

"That was... kinda fun." Ellie stood up, a smile on her face.

Sarah opened her mouth, trying to find the words. Every now and then a half syllable would make it out before she cut herself off.

Ellie's smile disappeared. "Oh... umm..." She fidgeted in place for a moment. "That was awful. Totally not fun at all."

Sarah glared at Ellie with a look of jealousy.

Siruzu snorted as air began to fill the chamber. "Good thing she can lie right?"

Ellie fidgeted again, staring down at her fingers. "Umm... sorry... I did get the doors open... and I... ummm... didn't mean to have sex with a computer. I mean, I did, but... umm..."

"When we get back to the Echoes..."

Siruzu snorted again. "Pressurized. Come on ladies, you can have angry makeup sex later."

The airlock deposited them in a small room. Empty equipment lockers lined the walls and a door was at the end of the room. The walls were bright pastel blue, overhead illumination that of your typical Starfleet ship. Surprisingly, there was no sound of an alarm.

Siruzu popped the seals on her EV suit, dumping the helmet on the floor and sliding out of the rest of the suit. Sarah was already kicking her discarded suit off to one side and re-holstering her pistols.

"Oooh... matching outfits!" Ellie said, comment on the undergarments both Sarah and Siruzu were wearing.

The outfits in question were a pair of standard Starfleet issue EV suit undergarmets. Which essentially meant a very tight black flex bodysuit with built in reinforced soles that made what would've been horribly uncomfortable to walk in actually comfortable, without adding to the bulk of the outfit. A pair of gloves that were removable finished it.

Siruzu pulled her gloves off and grabbed the attached equipment belt from her EV suit. She picked up her rifle and turn back to look at Ellie and Sarah. "Ready? Before they remember we're still here?"

Sarah was still shooting looks at Ellie and clearly wasn't about to let the matter rest, but she kept quiet and gave Siruzu a quick nod.

Siruzu took point, the door opening automatically and without resistance. Your standard starfleet hallway extended in both directions, though it felt a bit larger than normal, as if the scale was off. Siruzu yanked her tricorder from her belt. "Just let me scan for some lifesigns..."

"Well there's only, what fifty to a hundred decks to search?" Sarah said as she looked down at her own tricorder.

Ellie was looking down. "Umm... what's this?" She pointed at a series of colored lines on the floor with lettering at each junction in the hallway. "It even says interrogation is that way."

Siruzu looked down. Blinked. "Seriously?"

"You're kidding me..." Sarah too had joined Siruzu in looked at the floor.

Ellie pointed to the floor. "It says... 'interrogation.' Would they be interrogating her?"

Siruzu shrugged. "Even if they're not, the brig is probably close to it." She took off down the hall at a brisk jog, not even waiting for Sarah and Ellie to catch up.

"I hope..." Sarah let her voice trail off and charge up the hallways after Siruzu. She could hear the sound of Siruzu's phaser echo down the hallway, and the occasional crunch as someone's head met the side of a bulkhead.

"What were you going to say Sarah?" Ellie asked, trying to keep up.

"Nothing that Siz hasn't already thought of. C'mon."

The two girls picked up their pace, having to dodge past or hop over one limp body after another. They didn't really have to keep Siruzu in sign so much as follow the trail of bodies and the blue line.

As they turned down yet another hallway they found Siruzu stopped, her back pressed up against a wall, just a few centimeters away from a T junction.

"Why did you run off without us?" Ellie asked. Out of curiosity, the photonic lifeform started to lean around the corner, only to be yanked back by Siruzu; and just in time as a fusilade of phaser fire filled the connecting hallway.

"There's a cannon in the way." Siruzu's voice was strangely calm, though she wasn't looking at them, more staring at the corner, calculating the options available to her.

"I was wondering about these extra large hallways." Sarah glanced over at the wall opposite the junction which was now covered with blast craters.

"So... um... what do we do?" Ellie look at Siruzu, then at Sarah.

"I'm thinking." Siruzu hissed, clearly getting more agitated by the second. "There's power conduits running along the floor... I just can't figure out how to get to them."

Sarah looked up, then along the walls. Then opened fire. What she shot however wasn't just a wall, it was the emergency fire suppression system. The backup liquid system that was in place should forcefields be ineffective or the computer unable to isolate the fire. In this case, the concussive force of a phaser rifle on close to it's maximum sustainable setting ripped open the conduit and sent a concussive shockwave down the conduit which shattered the entire hallway's worth..

Siruzu didn't even hesitate, diving around the corner through the miserable downpour and firing. The turret gunners however couldn't even see the Trill. They were too busy trying to claw away the white foam from their eyes. Her shots instantly landed on the distracted gunner, pitching the commando over his seat and onto the floor. Her remaining shots slammed into the few remaining commandos. In a matter of seconds, the hallway was silent again, minus the sounds of a fire suppression system sputtering as it ran out of fire suppressant.

Siruzu wiped it off her garments and trudged forward, her hair and jumpsuit still coated in a thick layer of slime. "Come on!"

One of the commandos was about to get up as Siruzu went by, she didn't even stop as she fired her phaser rifle once more, killing him instantly. The blue line terminated at a door to her right. It opened without resistance. Two remaining commandos met their end as the Trill entered, firing as she went.

For a second, there was silence.

"Aren't you a little short for a stormtrooper?"

The scene could only best be described as a little awkward. Talia's voice was whimsical, even cheerful, but she didn't look the part. Her jumpsuit (at least Siruzu assumed it was from when she'd seen her last) was torn and her green skin marred by dozen of bruises. She was bound to a chair, her arms and legs tied to the chair. Three or four needles were running into her body at various points along one arm and medical equipment reported her vital signs on displays to either side. If it was possible to look greener, she did.

Siruzu, Sarah and Ellie were on the other side of the room in flex tight suits, still dripping all over with white foam, not quite looking the part of a proper rescue party.

"You know... you girls are really terrible at this whole rescue thing." Talia added after a few moments of stunned silence.

Siruzu walked forward finally. "Watch the door." She said quietly.

Sarah quickly nodded and walked back into the hallway.

"But I wanna..." Ellie started to say, as Sarah grabbed her and dragged her towards the hallway.

Siruzu silently went to work disabling the force restrains on the console. There wasn't any security, so it didn't take any time.

As the restraints came loose Talia audibly exhaled. "Hey Siruzu."

The trill looked over. She didn't say anything for the longest time, then finally settled on, "Hey."

"So... what took you so long?" Talia was making no move to get up. "It certainly didn't sound like you were taking any prisoners out there."

"Had to wade through a few dead bodies."

"That all?" Talia began picking the needles out of her arm one by one, grimacing each time.

"We might've also demolished a few city blocks on New Romulus as well..."

"Only a few?"

"Wasn't exactly my intention."

"Sure it wasn't."

Siruzu smiled. "I'm glad you're alright."

"Me too." Talia extended a hand.

Siruzu took it and pulled Talia gently to her feet, catching the Orion as she swayed dangerously forward. There was a moment of heat that passed between the two women, neither Siruzu nor Talia moving.

The door hissed open. "Seriously... will you two just kiss already!" Sarah yelled from the hallway.

Siruzu brushed a strand of Talia's hair from her face. "I... I..."

"Shut up and kiss me damnit!" Talia wrapped her arms around Siruzu's neck, leaning heavily on her.

Their lips met a second later and for a second, the rest of the ship faded away. There was only them and for the first time in a long while, Siruzu felt her heart warm.

Ellie squealed with glee. "Ahhh! I love happy endings!"

It brought Siruz back to reality. Talia too by the way the orion's eyes snapped back open. They were still on a ship filled with hostile paramilitary commandos.

Sarah was already arguing with Ellie again, "Oh? Go on, do tell."

Ellie playfully slapped Sarah's shoulder. "Hey... they're having a moment!"

"Wait? She actually did?" Sarah quickly leaned into the doorway to spy on the two.

"You missed it!"

"Do it again."

"It's not a moment if you do it on command!" Ellie wasn't looking in the room anymore.

Sarah grinned widely as she watched the couple pull into another long kiss, completely ignoring Sarah and Ellie's argument. "I think that counts."

Ellie squealed again, jumping up and down in place. "We need to do this more often!"

Sarah started to giggle, her giggle turned into a laugh, and before long she had to lean against the doorframe for support. "Ellie, we'd run out of starships at that rate."

"Not that silly!" Ellie gestured to Siruz and Talia. "More of that! The happy stuff."

Siruzu and Talia separated... lingering for only a second. Siruzu handed Talia a rifle from one of the commandos. The two women walked out side by side.

"So what's the plan?" Sarah asked.

"Revenge." Siruzu and Talia said in unison.

"But we don't have any whipped cream!" Ellie said.

"Not that kind of revenge Ellie." Siruzu pointed to the floor. "Yellow says it leads to engineering."

"We're so gonna blow this ship to hell." Talia was clearly winded but seemed energized for some reason, despite the bruises.

"That doesn't sound like fun." Ellie frowned.

"Well Ellie," Sarah started, "It's a lot like sex... you gotta climax sometime."

"And well... you should probably know that explosions turn Siruzu on." Talia smirked.

Siruzu shrugged. "It's not the only thing..."

"Go on." Sarah had an impish grin on her face as she started policing grenades from the corpses.

Siruzu brushed off the question, starting to follow the yellow bar on the floor down the hall. "Come on, we've got work to do."

"Wait up this time, and not too fast, I swear I'm going to slip on all this foam."


	6. Ravage

"I never realized so many things were so simple..." Ellie was saying. She was referring to the fact that they had hit absolutely zero resistance on their way to the warp core and the subsequent rigging of the warp reactor.

"It's amazing what Siruzu can relate to sex." Talia was walking with Ellie now, her wounds catching up to her, while Siruzu and Sarah were ready in front of their group.

"Is eating like sex?"

Talia thought about this for a second. "Kinda... maybe..."

"If you get hungry enough." Siruzu added as they turned another corner to find yet another unmanned gun on their way to the shuttle bay.

"I could see it." Sarah chimed in.

Talia snorted. "Wow... still impressed."

A pair of very large doors parted to reveal a massive six story shuttlebay with a forcefield holding the air in. Row after row of Type 16 shuttles lined the walls. They were fairly unremarkable though, compared to what was sitting dead center in the room.

"Oh you've got to be kidding me..." Sarah looked up.

Before them was a... ten meter tall robot exosuit. She could clearly see someone in a transparent aluminum cockpit mounted on top of what could be described as shoulders. It was vaguely humanoid shaped, through one arm looked more like a giant cannon of sorts than an arm. The other had fingers and a thumb.

It stood on two massive legs, each with large cylinders attached to what looked like a knee joint; at rest it was hard to really see how the legs would move. The obvious gears were hidden under what was probably layers of armor plating.

The entire exosuit bristled with weaponry, large phaser barrels and some sort of large energy emitter hung underneath the cockpit. Two large boxy structures were mounted on either shoulder, each a full meter taller than the cockpit.

"Well... I expected you'd find your way here eventually." The voice had an accent, vaguely from the British Isles on earth, though it was probably mixed a bit. None of them were experts anyway. It emanated from the robot itself. "I hope you don't mind that I didn't bother to send more of my soldiers to die. They're expensive to replace."

"I'm surprised you've got any left." Siruzu held her phaser rifle ready, apparently unconcerned that the robot was easily six times her height.

"My organization has deep pockets Ms Omalee." He paused for dramatic emphasis. "We anticipated that you'd come running after your friend. However, your tenacity and resourcefulness has been impressive, more than we had ever anticipated. I could use such talent in my organization. Unfortunately, our goals are mutually exclusive."

"You kidnapped Talia, you tortured her." Siruzu slowly began to pace back and forth. "The fact that you think I'd even consider working for you is disgusting."

"Oh quit monologuing Siruzu." Talia chided the trill.

"Oh I assure you." The voice from the robot replied. "I never had any hope that you would join us, for any sum of money. Your record speaks for itself Ms Omalee. You have absolutely zero respect for any kind of authority. You are a liability, a danger to both Starfleet and the Federation."

"That doesn't sound familiar at all." Sarah mumbled to herself.

"You have however, done exactly what we expected you would. You came here to this ship. That was the purpose of this entire exercise. This ship was built with one purpose. To kill you."

"Lots of people have tried to kill me in the last few days." Siruzu replied. "I'm still here. And oh yeah... I'm gonna kill you."

"Very elegant Siz." Sarah was the one to chide her this time.

"I'd be disappointed if you didn't try." The man in the robot said with a brief chuckle. "However, you'll find that you are hopelessly outmatched in every way. I have studied your every tactic, I know everything about you Ms. Omalee. I do think Ms. Quiller would find it hard to use her judo on this exoskeleton, even without the damage to her shoulder. Your hologram hasn't fired more than a handful of shots from that phaser rifle in her entire existence and the Orion woman, Talia, she probably couldn't stand for an entire fight."

He didn't give the girls a chance to protest. The phaser gatling guns on either side of the cockpit glowed with angry orange light and exploded into a barrage of energy bolts. The four girls only just managed to dive out of the way before the deck of the hanger nearly disintegrated under the withering fire.

"You do have a plan, don't you Siruzu?"

"Yeah, kill the giant robot." Siruzu dived behind a shuttle, which thankfully didn't explode instantly. Instead the bolts began to shatter the far side of it, slowly disintegrating the vehicle. Two bolts managed to penetrate as far as the front windscreen, causing the sheet of transparent aluminium to melt behind them.

"Any suggestions on -how-?" Sarah shouted back over the roar of the phaser emitters.

Siruzu was going to respond when she noticed Talia was gasping for air and clutching her side.

"Siruzu... I can't... can't."

Siruzu turned to Ellie. "Get Talia somewhere safe. Go!"

Ellie looked to Sarah for a second, then back to Siruzu and then looped Talia over her shoulders. She glanced at Sarah. "Don't you dare die on me..."

Sarah placed a hand on Ellie cheek. "Not if I can help it." She turned back to the robot. "Right, I'll draw his fire." Even as she said the words Sarah knew just how monumentally stupid her idea was. She charged out from behind the shuttle, dashing across to the far side of the hanger. The robot quickly turned its head to track her, the phaser gatling guns unrelenting as chunks of deck flew up into the air centimeters behind Sarah. She dived behind a shuttle and the gatling cannons suddenly stopped.

Siruzu felt the hairs on the back of her neck stand on end, at first she thought her nerves were getting to her, but she turned to look at Ellie and saw her start to flicker and then she heard the whine. That distinctive high pitched whine. She'd heard it somewhere before. Before her mind could connect sound and image, a deafening hiss filled the hanger.

She hazarded a look around the corner of the shuttle just in time to see a long beam of phased energy lance out from the robot's cannon like arm and slice through the shuttle she'd seen Sarah dive behind. The explosion was almost instantaneous as solid metal flashed to vapor with devastating consequences. Chunks of shuttle flew out in every direction, some half molten pieces embedded themselves in the wall behind Siruzu.

She glanced back at Ellie and Talia. "Go!"

Siruzu too ran out into the robot's line of fire. She slid behind another shuttle just in time to avoid being vaporized by the phaser beam. The beam cut off before ripping through the shuttle though. A loud hissing sound emanated from the robot as vents along the entire length of the cannon opened up and belched what was probably superheated exhaust.

Siruzu made the connection, tapping her commbadge open, she yelled. "The vents!" She popped out from behind the robot and fired for only a split second, before the gatling phaser started up and opened fire again, slowly chewing through the shuttle she was hiding behind.

One of the shuttles on the opposite end of the hanger started to move slowly, the robot either hadn't noticed it or could care less and it continued to focus its fire on the shuttle Siruzu was taking cover behind. Only when it was just a meter away from colliding with the machine's legs did it's torso suddenly pivot to face the machine.

"Don't think you can sneak up so easy!" The voice shouted out from the cockpit speaker, as the phaser cannons started to chew at the shuttle's cockpit. The robot's pilot realised only too late that there was no one in the cockpit and as Siruzu leaned out to fire off another burst of fire, she realised what the other trill was doing.

Sarah stood on the roof of the shuttle at its back, breaking into a sprint as she ran and then lept forward off of the shuttle and onto the venting arm cannon. She only managed to grab on with one arm, dangling perilously off it, though out of reach of any of the robot's weapons. With her free hand she reached down and plucked a photon grenade off her belt. She heaved herself upwards, swinging on the arm so she could just ram the grenade into one of the slowly closing radiator vents.

The grenade wedged in place just as Sarah's grip gave out and she landed unevenly on the deck, a pained grunt echoed off the hanger walls. Siruzu then heard a loud popping noise, but it wasn't the grenade. Tiny puffs of smoke shot out of the knees of the robot and little spheres attached to parachutes floated down toward the deck.

"You're kid- Sarah! Get out of there!" Not waiting... Siruzu ran out of cover and straight towards Sarah, who was still struggling to get back to her feet. In one quick motion, she grabbed the other trill and helped her to her feet, while half dragging, half running away.

They made it a few meters when the spheres detonated. The explosion propelled both women away from the robot and thankfully blinded it in the process. Siruzu crawled back to her feet, dragging Sarah behind another shuttle. For a second, there was silence.

"Ok that was probably my stupidest idea today." Sarah admitted.

"With any luck though... next time it tries to fire that gun there'll be a surprise." Siruzu took a deep breath. "Okay... we've gotta deal with the gatling phaser and those bombs..."

They didn't really have time to talk though, before the gatling laser was once again chewing away at their cover. It stopped a few second later. There was a deafening whine as the phaser cannon charged up again. The beam ripped through the shuttle above both women's head and abruptly stopped.

There was another loud whine, but this time it didn't end with a deafening beam of light. Siruzu hazarded a look, just in time to see the phaser cannon on the arm start to glow bright red. There was an explosion shortly thereafter. The entire arm ripped open violently, chunks of red hot metal flying in all directions. Siruzu ducked back down to avoid one that slammed into the wall behind them.

The voice of the pilot snarled out of the loudspeakers, no longer cool or collected. "Fine! Take this!" Siruzu could place this sound, two large hatches being moved very quickly on large hinges. The two girls ducked out from behind cover to see the front panel of both shoulder mounted boxes lift up and reveal dozens of missile launch tubes.

"Run!"

The first of the missiles slid off the rails and was soon followed by a nearly endless number, all headed directly for the two women. Siruzu and Sarah dived out of the way and behind another shuttle. Missiles slammed into the wall, ripping clean through the frame and eating away into the hull panel. Plasma conduits blew out all along the length of the wall, showering them with debris, even as they stumbled towards another shuttle.

"This isn't going so well..." Siruzu was gasping for air herself.

"What? No smartass remarks now, Ms Omalee?" The pilot's voice boomed.

"How many missiles could he possibly have?" Sarah asked.

The distinct sounds of many more missiles firing off the rails was her reply.

"You just had to go and give him ideas didn't you." Siruzu ran again, knowing their cover was probably going to explode at any second. It did too as the missiles impacted. About half slammed into the wall as well, disintegrating even more of the structural plating. The entire wall groaned.

Siruzu looked up. "Oh not good."

The entire second level creaked, groaned and started to collapse downward. They ran again, this time straight across the room, narrowly avoiding a sustained burst from the gatling phaser as they went. The entire hanger shook as the second level smashed down into the first, sending shuttles sliding at random from their parking spots.

One of them slid straight for the robot. The emitter on the chest of the robot glowed brightly and a gigantic shield bubble came up, extending all around the robot and stopping the shuttle in it's tracks.

"Wonder how much you can take..." Siruzu climbed into one of the other shuttles and quickly programmed the autopilot to crash it into the robot. She dived out without a look back.

Sarah quickly got the gist of Siruzu's plan and set to work on a shuttle of her own. The first shuttle lurched forward and the robot dropped it's shield, the gatling phasers whined to life and began to shred the shuttle before it had even made it halfway. Sarah's shuttle only made it a little further before the robot twisted its torso to line up it's phasers. A meter away from the exosuit, the shuttle lurched violently to the left, a stray phaser bolt must have hit some vital circuit in the navigation system, it's engines were still spooling up to high speed as it slammed into on of the two large hangar doors at the back of the room.

Sarah charged for another shuttle, and never quite heard the whoosh from the missile as it left its rail, only a fraction of a second later the blast wave from the missile's warhead caught her and slammed her into the nearest bulkhead. She could still see, still hear, but her legs felt like they were on fire, they protested any movement with white hot pain.

"ENOUGH!" The pilot of the robot was clearly pissed now.

Siruzu didn't have the energy to reply, she was running and trying to get one more shuttle moving before the robot started firing again. The hangar was littered with shuttle debris, mostly large pieces. Their cover was almost completely used up. She was half way through the autopilot recalculations when a blade of pure energy sliced through the hull of the shuttle like it was paper.

It passed only centimeters from her arm. Her eyes went wide as she looked up to see the robot holding an energy sword in it's hand. "Seriously... a sword... what use is a..." She was cut off as the shuttle literally split down the middle. She lost her footing as she fell with the shuttle, slamming into the ground, a piece of transparent aluminum going straight through her shoulder. She gasped, unable to move. She continued to fire her phaser rifle though in her one still useful hand, stubbornly refusing to quit.

The giant robot finally moved, taking two giant steps towards her, completely impervious to her efforts. "I commend you Ms Omalee on an excellent performance. Your reputation certainly precedes you. However, I have all the angles. I hold every card. Your friend can't save you now."

"Friends." Siruzu emphasized the 's'.

Suddenly, there was the sound of possibly twenty different shuttle phaser cannons opening fire. All of which slammed into the robot from the top level. The robot engaged it's shield, which lasted only seconds under the continued fire from the top level. Slowly but surely, the robot was driven back towards the forcefield holding the air in.

Armor plating buckled and finally gave way, exposing internal circuitry of the robot. Weapon racks disintegrated and literally fell off as the robot broke apart under the fire. Finally, a shot penetrated the cockpit. There was a loud splat as phaser met flesh and then the robot literally exploded on the deck.

"Siruzu." Talia's voice boomed on the comm. "Answer me damnit!"

Siruzu could feel nothing but the white hot pain in her shoulder, but she managed a few words. "I'm still here..."

The hangar bay was nearly silent, the only sounds were two green women making their way down ladders towards the lower level. It was over, it was finally over.


	7. At the End

Ellie had watched the various ways Talia had kept busy over the past day. Violet hadn't said much to either of them, preferring the bowels of the ship to keep her company and occasionally checking in on the medical hologram in the medbay. Talia on the other hand was clearly restless. Despite her own injuries, Talia hadn't slept more than a few hours, and was close approaching the 13th hour of her vigil in sickbay.

She'd never once bothered the medical hologram, or even gotten into it's way. Essentially every few minutes she'd find her way to sickbay, watch for a bit, then go back down the hall to either the small lounge that doubled as a mess hall, if you could call it that, or back to the room she'd claimed for herself, or to one of the computer terminals to look up info on the ship's schematics.

She'd seemed cheerful enough, always saying hi and smiling if she passed Ellie in the hallway, but Ellie hadn't really known what to say. The last few days were weighing fairly heavily on the photonic lifeform's shoulders. She still hadn't quite understood why she'd killed, what had convinced her that it had been the correct course of action. She couldn't rationalize it away the way Siruzu had indicated. She left that thought for now as she spotted Talia headed back for the sickbay, coming from the mess hall with a steaming cup of orion tea.

As usual, Talia smiled and said, "Hello," as she walked past.

Ellie stopped her this time. "Are you alright?" She wasn't really sure what she was getting at, but she figured she'd just try something.

Talia ran her free hand through her long dark hair. "I don't know," the orion shrugged, "been trying not to think about it."

Ellie was silent for a moment. "Do you love her?"

Talia smiled, "Love is a very strong word to use around Siruzu Omalee." She took a sip from her tea. "She was my best friend for so long, then she left. She left the family for the company of strangers because she felt that we were mad at her."

"Why would you be mad at her?"

"I'm sure you've figured this out by now, but Siruzu doesn't really listen to what you say. She draws her own conclusions long before you speak." Talia leaned against the curved wall of the bulkhead. "She was convinced and I think she was angry with herself too."

"For what?"

"We were fighting Romulans, and Siruzu made a call." Talia closed her eyes for a moment. "To make a long story short, that call got alot of people killed."

"Friends?" Ellie was sure she already knew the response.

"Yeah, family even." Talia looked down at her feet. "We tried to get her to reconsider, but she wanted to run. In the end, we let her go, hoping she'd find herself again."

"Then she went to New Romulus right?"

"It was a symptom I think." Talia started walking slowly down the hall.

Ellie quickly darted to keep up. "A symptom?"

"Yeah, she went to New Romulus to escape from something else. I've never been able to really pry that detail out of her. If I had to guess though, she was angry at herself again."

"How can she be so upset with herself?"

Talia frowned. "Siruzu doesn't care what the rest of the world thinks, never has. She does however care what she thinks." The orion stopped again outside the sick bay. "And you know we are all our worst critics."

Ellie fell silent again, not sure how to respond for what had to be an eternity. In reality it was only a few seconds. "That seems very lonely."

Talia nodded. "Yeah, it does."

This was a really depressing conversation. To which Ellie had only one conclusion. "So you gonna kiss again?"

Talia's skin flushed to a darker shade of green. "I'm not opposed to the idea... what's it to you?"

"I like it when people are happy. Siruzu actually looked happy kissing you. I don't think I've ever seen her like that."

Talia crossed her arms while still keeping hold on her cup of tea. "Look, I know you're a hologram..."

"Pho-ton-ic life-form."

"Sorry, photonic lifeform... but you seem really interested in me and Siruzu."

"I like to see people happy."

Talia clearly didn't believe her, not with that look. "Seriously Ellie, what's it you?"

Ellie thought for a moment. "I guess... I like playing matchmaker." She shrugged. "It just warms my heart, well my photonic one."

"You are one strange ho... pho-ton-ic lifeform."

Ellie shrugged. "Plus Siruzu played matchmaker for me and Sarah once, it's only fair I help her out."

Talia suddenly looked far more interested. "Oh she did now?"

"Well, she also wanted to prank Sarah at the same time..."

"That sounds like the Siruzu I know."

"And there may have been copious usage of whipped cream."

"Dare I ask what the whipped cream was for?"

"Ummm... I should probably just show you the dungeon."

Talia snorted. "Wait... you girls have a dungeon here?"

Ellie started to bounce on the balls of her feet down the hallway. "Oh yes... and deck 3 also has a full service spa."

Talia glanced at the door to sickbay, then turned to follow Ellie. "Seriously? A spa? And no one has told me about this?"

"Siruzu was in charge of redesigning the ship." Ellie explained.

"I so need to see this for myself."

"Come on." Ellie's sing-song voice carried down the hall as she headed for the turbolift.

"Why would Siruzu ever put a spa and a dungeon on the ship? You keep prisoners in a dungeon? She doesn't even keep prisoners!" Talia protested as she entered the turbolift.

Ellie looked shocked. "No no, not that kind of dungeon. A 'dungeon.'" Ellie made the air quotes gesture with her hands.

Talia looked confused for all of a second before her eyes went wide. "You're joking..."

Ellie shook her head as the turbolift door opened to deck 3. The hallway lighting was dim, but that was normal. Ellie bounced along, knowing where she was going. "I'm not." Ellie stopped at a door, the marking on the door had originally read cargo storage area 3, which had been scratched off by hand and replaced with the word, "Dungeon."

"Okay... that's definitely Siruzu." Talia admitted.

Ellie punched a code into the door's control panel.

Talia gasped at the sight. "Oh... wow..."

Ellie dived onto the heart shaped bed with a squeal of delight. "Yeah, all the tools you may need... some you probably don't. Sarah's kind of into being tied up so..." Ellie gestured to a pair of worn cuffs still hanging from the bed posts.

Talia hadn't moved from the doorway, still slowly examining the contents of the room. "So... I fail to see how this was a prank."

Ellie pointed to the walls. "There's an immobilization field in here, which can be targeted if need be. So I immobilized her, tied her up..."

"Siruzu?"

"No!" Ellie shook her head from side to side, "Sarah. Where was I? Oh... yeah... so I got Sarah all tied up and was proceeding to well, have some fun with it, when whipped cream came splashing out of the wall. She pumped gallons of whipped cream in here. I mean... we couldn't even see each other."

Talia looked down and started to giggle, the pitched her head back and started to laugh hysterically. "Only Siruzu would do that... only Siruzu could possibly make a prank that elaborate. I was content with putting a whoopie cushion under the Captain's seat."

Ellie looked confused, but only for a moment. "Oh... also known as a fart cushion."

"Exactly." Talia stared at the ceiling, still smiling. "Oh she would come up with the best pranks. Those were good times."

"She still hasn't retaliated for our last retaliation." Ellie said with a sigh.

"Oh?" Talia sobered up, composing herself once again. "Do tell me about the retaliation."

Ellie grinned. "Well, the immobilization field, turns out you can direct it anywhere on the ship. So... we set it up to activate in engineering. We'd replicated a pair of whipped cream blasters and covered her from head to toe."

"You caught Siruzu Omalee in her own trap?" Talia was incredulous.

"I have proof!" Ellie ran up to a nearby computer console and tapped through the menus to get out of the room controls and into personal files. She pulled up the photo of the incident in question.

Talia's eyes were wide and she was shaking with laughter. "Oh you didn't... the cherry on her nose... and that look of fury...she's so..." Talia literally fell over laughing, narrowly avoiding knocking over a rack filled with various toys.

Ellie looked down at the orion currently rolling on the floor laughing. Ellie was smiling, but she didn't get why Talia was on the floor. "Are you okay?"

"It's... so... funny." Talia could barely speak now she was laughing so hard. She took a deep breath and sat back up. "I can't believe she never retaliated for that."

Ellie shrugged. "Don't know really, I think she's been upset for a long time, that's why you two should kiss again."

Talia sighed, "Just kiss?"

Ellie looked around the room. "Well... I'd be cheering for you to use the dungeon."

Talia snorted. "You're into bondage aren't you?"

"Kinda in my program."

"How so?"

"Well... I was the combination of three or four Orion love slave programs, but I haven't been turned off in..." Ellie started counting on her fingers, "6, 7... oh dear... I think I've been on for a year now."

"Happy Birthday."

Ellie looked confused for a moment, then smiled wide. "I'm one now!"

"When you get a chance, have Siruzu take a look at your program, no offense intended, but sometimes you need to do maintenance on long running ho... 'photonic lifeforms.' Don't want to have you crashing on us."

"Oh... the spa!" Ellie grabbed Talia's hand and dragged her down the hallway toward another door.

Inside the Spa, the air was warm, very humid. The lighting had been modified to give it a very soft pastel blue hue to everything. The pools and tubs were bubbling with warm water and holographic attendants waited at each station. The room was easily the size of the rest of the deck. Emitters were placed for privacy. So the entire room could essentially be subdivided at will.

"Ellie," Talia wrapped an arm around the photonic lifeform's shoulder, "not gonna lie, this place is awesome."

"Getting Sarah down here is hard, but I like it, even if I don't get dirt underneath my fingernails. There's something about bubbles and massages and being lazy that's just wonderful."

"And Siruzu, she ever made it down here?"

"I think when she first installed it." Ellie looked down at her fingers again, counting. "No... just the once to my knowledge."

"I'm so fixing that."

XXX

Siruzu yawned and ran a hand through her loose red hair. It cascaded freely to her shoulders, a rare sight for anyone who knew her. The medical hologram had released her on the condition that she rest. She'd considered going down to engineering, but had fast reconsidered. She didn't want anything to do with the engine room of a ship for a while; possibly forever.

Ultimately, she'd settled on a visit to the spa. Even after a shower post sickbay she still felt dirty. She'd been fighting and killing to rescue Talia for so long she'd forgotten about anything else. Hell, there hadn't been anything else. There had just been her mad quest to rescue her friend.

Friend.

That was probably the wrong word. In what had probably been a freakish outburst of emotion, she'd kissed Talia. Well, she'd been lips, Talia had been tongue. It didn't mean anything though? Did it? Ever since she'd shattered Telian Vir's heart, she'd felt detached from the world. She'd been sleep walking.

She activated the spa with the touch of a panel. A holographic panel in front of her let her select the options for what she wanted. Definitely bubbles, definitely a massage, definitely hot. She wasn't sure what beyond that. She wanted mainly to sleep, which would mean getting the knots out of her shoulders.

She tossed her clothes aside, placed the towel she'd dragged down from her quarters on the towel rack and slid into the now bubbling water, immersing herself to her neck. She didn't bother to mess with her hair, it would knot and tangle, but she'd deal with it later.

"What are you doing Siz?" She directed the question at no one in particular.

Her gaze drifted upwards to the ceiling as she settled into a comfortable resting position. She might have been staring at the ceiling, but she didn't see it at all. Her mind was doing abstract algebra, trying to put together all the pieces of thought and emotion she'd felt in the last week.

She glanced down at her injured shoulder, even with dermal regeneration, there'd be a scar. The piece of transparent aluminum had shattered her collarbone and tore every muscle there. The miracles of modern medicine had of course rebuilt all that. It was just one more injury.

Warm hands settled on her shoulders. Anywhere else, she'd have probably reacted violently. However, she'd designed and built this spa. She knew the holographic attendant's routines. With the methodical nature of a surgeon, the hologram set to work kneading the knots out of her shoulders, applying just enough pressure.

"Harder." She commanded the hologram, leaning forward to give it better access to her shoulders.

There was the occasional sharp pain as the hologram worked a knot, but each was followed with a sudden release of tension. It was perfect. It was methodical, mathematical. Just what she needed to relax.

There was an abrupt interruption of the massage, followed by the sound of a hologram being deactivated. Siruzu opened her eyes abruptly, not turning around though. "Ellie, Sarah, if you dare bring the whipped cream out again I swear I'll ensure you can't fool around for a month!"

The sound of a towel hitting the floor finally caused her to turn around.

Talia made no effort to cover herself. "There goes my plan to sneak up on you." Dermal regeneration had left Talia with once again unbroken soft green skin from head to toe. Her hair was pinned up in a loose bun.

"You do know that I'm rarely snuck up on."

"Who do you think you're talking to here?" Talia walked to her, dipping her toe into the water.

"What are you doing?"

"What do you think I'm doing?" Talia gave her a smile, then slipped in behind Siruzu in the small pool.

Siruzu felt Talia's bare skin come into contact with her own and shivered involuntarily. Talia placed her hands on Siruzu's shoulders, feeling the remaining knots and working them out without any real order or pattern.

"Siruzu... I've never seen anyone this tense before." Even while massaging her shoulders, Talia didn't break the skin to skin contact she had with the trill.

Siruzu could smell something primal, like perfume but more natural, more animalistic. "I can smell you from here."

Talia snorted, whispering in Siruzu's ear. "I can smell you too."

Something about the way she spoke in her ear made Siruzu's breath catch in her throat. One of Talia's hands had drifted to Siruzu's side under the water, soft fingernails barely scraping against her exposed skin.

Talia rested her chin on Siruzu's shoulder. "So... I had an interesting conversation with Ellie yesterday."

Something in the way that Talia was cradling her had helped Siruzu relax more than she had ever anticipated. "Every conversation with her is interesting." Siruzu leaned her cheek against Talia's.

"She thinks we should kiss again." Talia made no move to break away, wrapping her arms around Siruzu's belly. "She did suggest using the dungeon too..." 

Siruzu looked sideways at Talia. "You can't be serious!"

"I don't know, the thought of you tied up is rather priceless." Talia giggled.

Siruzu couldn't help herself, the soft shaking from Talia as she giggled prompted her own fit of giggling. "I personally think that situation should be reversed."

"Do you now?" Talia reached up to brush some of Siruzu's loose hair away from her face.

Siruzu turned, wrapping her arm around Talia's back and placing her hand along Talia's spine. "Screw the dungeon."

Talia smiled, as if knowing what Siruzu was about to do next. "That's the Siruzu I know."

Siruzu didn't respond with words, but actions, pressing her lips against Talia's. Talia might've been tongue, or maybe it was Siruzu. It didn't matter to either of them.


End file.
